Scorpion Attack - A Paralyzing Sting in the Grand Canyon

Abigail Barronian assumed her life probably wasn't in any danger when she was stung by a scorpion while on a rafting trip down the Grand Canyon. But then she lost her ability to see and speak, and a very long and painful night began. ~~ To advertise on the show, contact us! ~~ Tooth & Claw is brought to you by QCODE. Support the show and get access to an extensive library of exclusive episodes like this by supporting the show on Patreon or joining the Grizzly Club on Apple Podcasts. For the latest updates on the show and all things wildlife, follow us at toothandclawpod.com and social: Instagram: @ToothandClawPodcast Twitter: @ToothandClawPod Wes: @GrizKid Jeff: @jefe_larson Mike: @mikey3ds Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:13Jeff Larson?

  Hello, everybody in the world. We are Tooth and Claw Podcast. We have our wildlife bear biologist Wes Larson, certified.

• 0:22Mike Smith?

  Heyo.

• 0:24Jeff Larson?

  I'm his little brother.

• 0:27Mike Smith?

  What was that? What is that persona?

• 0:29Wes Larson?

  That was two, that was two hang loosees. Brian Wilson died today, so.

• 0:33Jeff Larson?

  The energy. So you're excited.

• 0:35Wes Larson?

  Bring in the energy. Is that a surfer thing, "heyo"?

• 0:38Mike Smith?

  No, hey, they just do hang loose, but the "heyo" was, that was all Wes Larson. Oh, that's your little twist on a classic. Got it.

• 0:45Jeff Larson?

  I'm Jeff Larson, Wes's little brother. I'm a bear knower. I know about bears.

• 0:52Mike Smith?

  Sure.

• 0:52Jeff Larson?

  And then we got Mike Smith, who is our Mike guy. He does mics.

• 0:58Mike Smith?

  Our Mike.

• 0:59Jeff Larson?

  He's our Mike. He works with mics. He got the soap bar that Sydney Sweeney sells of her, like, bath water.

• 1:08Mike Smith?

  Yes.

• 1:09Jeff Larson?

  How, do you think it's good quality soap, or is it just like a sexual thing?

• 1:14Mike Smith?

  No, I'm not. Listen. You know that whole thing where you drop soap in prison? I don't know if this is touchy territory. I don't even need another person to make that like a fun experience anymore.

• 1:26Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:26Mike Smith?

  I just need me in the soap.

• 1:28Wes Larson?

  You didn't actually buy that soap, but whoever, that's a crazy idea.

• 1:33Jeff Larson?

  I don't know. Oh, he bought it for sure. I know he bought it.

• 1:38Mike Smith?

  Pleading.

• 1:38Jeff Larson?

  I don't know why you brought prison into making.

• 1:42Wes Larson?

  He just heard soap and immediately thought prison.

• 1:45Jeff Larson?

  Explain.

• 1:47Wes Larson?

  Hey, guys, I broke my resolution.

• 1:49Mike Smith?

  No, dude.

• 1:51Wes Larson?

  I killed a bug.

• 1:52Mike Smith?

  You nuked someone?

• 1:53Wes Larson?

  Oh, that was Jeff's. You know that cricket? Yeah, that was Jeff. No nukes. There's a cricket that showed up in our last recording and I'd had robin problems and I asked Braxton, I said, Braxton, was that cricket in there? And he said, it sure was.

• 2:08Jeff Larson?

  You got a comment on it too?

• 2:09Wes Larson?

  I spent some time looking for it and I finally, it finally scurried out and I smooshed it.

• 2:14Jeff Larson?

  You think it had a family?

• 2:16Wes Larson?

  Uh, I hope not, but I did feel bad actually, but I had to do it for the good of the show. So there are no crickets today.

• 2:24Jeff Larson?

  I would kill its family too, because the family is probably really sad.

• 2:28Wes Larson?

  Well, they might do like a John Wick on me too. You never know.

• 2:31Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 2:32Wes Larson?

  Yeah. So anyway.

• 2:33Mike Smith?

  That's only if you would have killed its dog.

• 2:35Jeff Larson?

  Well, sick brag dude.

• 2:37Wes Larson?

  I wasn't bragging. I was just like, I felt like I had to let people know because I'd been like on my pedestal lately about not killing any bugs. And I killed this bug and it did make me feel bad.

• 2:48Jeff Larson?

  Nice.

• 2:48Mike Smith?

  I have an animal question I want to ask you at the top, Wes.

• 2:51Wes Larson?

  Okay.

• 2:51Mike Smith?

  So I was thinking, I was thinking about a grasshopper having, or a cricket, having a pet dog to kill in order to really set the John Wick stage.

• 3:00Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 3:01Mike Smith?

  Are there other animals besides humans that keep other animals as pets? Is there any kind of relationship like that in the natural world?

• 3:09Wes Larson?

  There's like symbiotic relationships and there's relationships like, like a cleaning station, you know, where a big manta ray will pull in or something. And there's all those little wrasse fish that will, that eat all the little parasites off of it or whatever.

• 3:22Mike Smith?

  Right.

• 3:22Wes Larson?

  And that helps both of them. I think that'd be the closest thing to having like a pet would be like one of those symbiotic relationships. But I don't think there's any in the world that we know of where they have a pet for like enjoyment or companionship, you know, in the wild at least. Yeah. Well, I got a fun episode for us today. It's a new animal. It's one that uh, I learned a lot while we were, while I was doing the research. Before I get into it, is there anything else you guys need to say? Or can we just, can we just launch into this?

• 3:54Jeff Larson?

  Think we can Hercules beat it?

• 3:56Wes Larson?

  Sure, you can say that. Yeah.

• 3:58Jeff Larson?

  Was that was the animals?

• 4:00Wes Larson?

  No, no, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna. People are gonna know because it says in the title, but.

• 4:06Jeff Larson?

  And I know already too.

• 4:08Wes Larson?

  Just yeah, yeah. Ah, anyway, the sources today, I really use mostly just one source for the story, which is from a another podcast, but they're friends of ours, Outside Magazine's podcast, Out Alive, which I was on once with Tom, Tom Smith. They did a story about this story called Paralyzed by a Scorpion. I really recommend you guys checking out that podcast in general. It's a really good outdoors podcast about survival situations. This episode is really good. If you want to hear the victim tell the story in her own words, I'm going to be summarizing it because I think it's one of the better scorpion stories I've found. And then we're also going to hear from our friend Ian, who has a great story from Africa involving scorpions.

• 4:53Wes Larson?

  So it's gonna be a fun episode. All right.

• 4:54Mike Smith?

  Hey, yo.

• 4:55Jeff Larson?

  Hey.

• 4:56Mike Smith?

  That's what I gotta say to that.

• 4:57Wes Larson?

  So are you guys into, are you guys into river rafting? Say, say you're really into river rafting. Just say it, say it right.

• 5:04Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, we, I feel like that's one of the only things Mike genuinely likes.

• 5:09Mike Smith?

  I do.

• 5:09Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 5:10Mike Smith?

  Yeah.

• 5:11Wes Larson?

  So you're really into it.

• 5:13Mike Smith?

  I like it quite a bit. Yeah.

• 5:14Wes Larson?

  Okay. Well, now that we've established you guys are such river rats, what's the number one place in the contiguous U. A. United States where people want to go river rafting? Like the lower forty eight, where like whitewater rafting is, it's kind of like the holy grail.

• 5:31Jeff Larson?

  The Grand Canyon.

• 5:32Wes Larson?

  Bingo, Jeff. You nailed it. I'm so proud of you. Uh huh. The Grand Canyon, the Colorado River and the Grand Canyon. So Abigail.

• 5:41Jeff Larson?

  There's a viral video right now of like a little boy who walks up to the overlook of the Grand Canyon.

• 5:48Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 5:48Jeff Larson?

  And he just turns to the camera. It's like, but where's the canyon? And he's like genuinely, it's all the, that's in the like video is the canyon.

• 6:00Wes Larson?

  Yeah. That's really funny.

• 6:03Mike Smith?

  Oh, boy. Darwin. What a idiot. Coming for him.

• 6:06Wes Larson?

  Yeah. Abigail Barronian grew up in Washington State, and she was always into the great outdoors. Everything from skiing to hiking, fishing. But in 2022, she got more and more into river rafting. And she was actually lucky enough that year to be able to go on a float trip through the Grand Canyon, which is really lucky because there's a really long waitlist to be able to float the Grand Canyon. You can't just go do it. You need permits and whatnot. So, guys, what kind of dangerous critters might you find in the Grand Canyon?

• 6:34Jeff Larson?

  Serial killers.

• 6:35Wes Larson?

  Possibly serial killers? Yeah.

• 6:37Mike Smith?

  Yeah. That's a mountain lion?

• 6:39Wes Larson?

  Mountain lion, occasional black bear.

• 6:42Mike Smith?

  A tumbling boulder.

• 6:43Wes Larson?

  A tumbling boulder. I don't know if I'd count them as a critter, but maybe critters from the movie Critters? They decided to do the Grand Canyon? I'd count that.

• 6:53Jeff Larson?

  Those worms and tremors.

• 6:55Wes Larson?

  Yeah, the tremors worms. Graboids.

• 6:58Mike Smith?

  How do you think the canyon got formed in the first place?

• 7:01Wes Larson?

  Oh, yeah. Surely Graboids dug that out.

• 7:05Mike Smith?

  It's crazy how we're just letting Dune get away from totally copying Graboids.

• 7:09Wes Larson?

  Shy Halud, dude? It could have been Shy Halud that dug that out.

• 7:13Mike Smith?

  Right. Frank Herbert, what a hack, just stealing the sand worm idea.

• 7:17Wes Larson?

  Just 20 years before Tremors came out. All right. And there's also lots of venomous stuff. So there's rattlesnakes, Blackwood of spiders, and of course, scorpions. So, well, Abigail, she'd spent a lot of time outside. And like a lot of people that are fairly outdoorsy, I don't think she was too worried about potential dangers of wildlife in a place like the Grand Canyon. And that's good because if you are prepared and, you know, you know what you're getting into, you don't want to let potential dangers stop you from enjoying an incredible trip like a float through the Grand Canyon. Plus, there are bigger things to worry about. There's class five rapids, 115 degree weather.

• 7:55Jeff Larson?

  Climate change.

• 7:56Wes Larson?

  Climate change.

• 7:57Jeff Larson?

  Politics.

• 7:58Wes Larson?

  About that. You never know if you're going to get into a political discussion.

• 8:02Jeff Larson?

  Nuclear bombs.

• 8:03Wes Larson?

  Nukes. Yeah. Yeah. Hopefully not her Jeff. His resolutions out the window. She actually also had a case of COVID the first week of the trip.

• 8:13Mike Smith?

  That's another danger.

• 8:14Wes Larson?

  Anyway, the group had made it to Whitmore Wash and it was insanely hot. So Abby and her friend, I'm gonna call her Abby, her name's Abigail, but we're doing Abby for short. And her friend Grayson put some water on the hot sand and then they put their pads on top, hoping that this evaporating water would help cool down their sleeping area just a little bit. And about 10:30 at night, Abigail and Grayson are on their pads, which are on top of a canvas mat. And all that Abby has is a thin sheet that's pulled over her. They're staring up at the endless stars of the desert southwest. They're chatting, slowly Grayson feels his eyes getting heavy and sleep is washing over him. But then suddenly movement on his arm jolts him back awake.

• 8:55Wes Larson?

  And if you're lying in the middle of nowhere in the desert, camping out, you don't have a tent, in the dark, and you feel something substantial crawling on your arm, what is your first reaction gonna be?

• 9:07Jeff Larson?

  Uh, snake?

• 9:08Wes Larson?

  Not like, what are you gonna think? What are you actually going to do?

• 9:11Jeff Larson?

  Uh, yeah, I'm gonna swat it with my other hand.

• 9:15Wes Larson?

  Yeah. You're gonna throw that, that little fetter, you know? You're just gonna chuck it. And that's what he did. He flicked it off.

• 9:22Jeff Larson?

  I would swipe my arm.

• 9:23Wes Larson?

  Yeah, he flicked it off and, you know, it flew through the air. And he even said, what the fuck was that? And immediately flicked it off his arm. It sailed through the air, it's in full defensive mode now, and it lands on Abby's thigh.

• 9:38Jeff Larson?

  Oh.

• 9:40Mike Smith?

  I like it being in defense mode before it even lands. It's just like squaring up in the middle of the air, ready to go.

• 9:46Wes Larson?

  It's flying through the air, you know, that's not, that's not normal stuff for it. So it's already at a heightened.

• 9:52Jeff Larson?

  I like how Wes asked, like, what are you gonna do if you feel something on your arm? And the real answer is throw it on the person sleeping next to you.

• 10:01Wes Larson?

  That's not, you're gonna flick it and you're probably not gonna think, you're not necessarily gonna think about where it's gonna go, you know?

• 10:08Jeff Larson?

  But had I said, throw it on the person sleeping next to me, I would have been correct.

• 10:12Wes Larson?

  You would have been right. Yeah.

• 10:13Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 10:15Wes Larson?

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• 11:00Wes Larson?

  And those are people that are living through Wyoming winters, so they really know warm. The Hometown Down Jacket is 800 fill down, but it feels more like your favorite hoodie than it does a puffy. And for me, I am really excited about the men's Furnos Max insulated jacket. I'm constantly looking for a jacket that just ticks all the boxes, and this one really does. It's stretchy, it's breathable, it looks great, it keeps me super warm. It's just amazing. I just absolutely love this jacket. So ski season's almost here. Gear up now the way that the locals do. Go to stio.com/tooth for 20% off your order. That's S-T-I-O dot com slash tooth. Stio dot com slash tooth. Stio, designed and tested in Jackson Hole.

• 11:45Wes Larson?

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• 12:31Wes Larson?

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• 13:14Wes Larson?

  But yeah, I was thinking about that. When you suddenly feel something you think is a spider or something kind of scary on you. You don't really, you go into panic mode and you kind of just want it off no matter what. And I think that's what happened to Grayson. Anyway, this mystery intruder was actually much more of an intruder than they ever could have imagined. And we'll get to that. It was a species of bark scorpion that's relatively new to the Grand Canyon area. And when it hit Abby's thigh, it shot its tail forward lightning quick and stung her multiple times.

• 13:45Jeff Larson?

  Oh.

• 13:46Wes Larson?

  All right. So a bit of biology. There are about 1,500 species of scorpion in the world. And about 30 of them are dangerous to humans. All of them belonging to the family Boothaday, Boothaday, Boothaday. And according to a medical paper I found from 2012 that's titled Emerging Options for the Management of Scorpion Stings. And this is crazy to me. I had no idea this was this big of a widespread problem. There are about 1.5 million envenomations by scorpions worldwide every year. And about 2,600 deaths. So 2,600 people a year on average worldwide die from scorpions.

• 14:23Jeff Larson?

  Gee.

• 14:23Wes Larson?

  Wow. Yeah. I thought it was like maybe one or two.

• 14:26Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 14:27Wes Larson?

  A year. Yeah. Yeah. Most of those occur in Northern Africa and Southeast Asia and India.

• 14:32Jeff Larson?

  Okay. Yeah. I don't know. I feel like. When I was a little kid, I thought scorpions were like the most dangerous. And then once I got older, I was like, oh, they're not dangerous. And now you're telling me, no, you were right when you were a little boy.

• 14:45Wes Larson?

  Yeah. And especially to little kids, they're dangerous, actually. But no, you always hear that you hear like, oh, it's like a bee sting or or whatever. But there are scorpions out there, again, about thirty species that pose a real risk to humans. And according to this paper, on average, there are about a thousand scorpion invenamations every year in the US and one death. It actually is much higher than that. I found a different paper that says there's much more invenamations. I don't know how many deaths on average, but I think that's about right. And the scorpions responsible for those deaths are almost always from the genus Centruoides, which are the bark scorpions.

• 15:23Mike Smith?

  Hmm. How'd they end up in Arizona?

• 15:25Wes Larson?

  Uh, we'll talk about that. So there is a spe- there's several species of bark scorpion in Arizona, and one is called the Arizona bark scorpion. And that is thought to be our most dangerous scorpion in the United States. That's the one we're kind of doing biology for. But there's a twist to this story that I don't want to spoil yet.

• 15:43Jeff Larson?

  Oh.

• 15:44Wes Larson?

  An interesting little tidbit about scorpions. Generally speaking, the larger the pinchers, pincers, pincers, pinchers. What do you guys say? Pinchers or pincers?

• 15:55Jeff Larson?

  Pincer? Pin- pinch, pincers.

• 15:57Wes Larson?

  Pincers. Okay.

• 15:58Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 15:58Wes Larson?

  The larger the pincers on a scorpion, the less venomous it'll be. So for example, you remember in Hook, when they do the boo box?

• 16:06Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 16:07Wes Larson?

  And they put the guy in the boo box and they're dropping the big black scorpions in?

• 16:10Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 16:11Wes Larson?

  Which I think is Glenn Close.

• 16:12Jeff Larson?

  Fear Factor, they did some big.

• 16:14Wes Larson?

  Putting in there.

• 16:15Jeff Larson?

  Black scorpions.

• 16:16Mike Smith?

  Is that Glenn Close?

• 16:17Wes Larson?

  Yeah, Fear Factor two, yeah. So those are emperor scorpions. They're all also the ones they usually use in jackass and stuff. They have these really big black pincers. They look like a really formidable scorpion. But that's one where you're talking more about kind of like a bee sting or even less than a bee sting.

• 16:34Jeff Larson?

  Really?

• 16:35Wes Larson?

  Because they have those big pincers. And the thing there is like, that is a scorpion that's able to kill its prey with its pincers, but.

• 16:43Jeff Larson?

  So it doesn't need much venom.

• 16:44Wes Larson?

  It's venom, but the ones that have really small slender pincers. Now I'm saying pincers a lot.

• 16:51Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, you're nailing it.

• 16:52Wes Larson?

  Yeah, those ones tend to have much more potent venom. So if you're out in the desert and you see a yellow scorpion with really slender ones of those little guys.

• 17:03Jeff Larson?

  Claws?

• 17:04Wes Larson?

  Claws, yep. That's the kind you want to watch out for.

• 17:07Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 17:08Wes Larson?

  And bark scorpions do have really slender pincers.

• 17:11Jeff Larson?

  So you must love scorpions.

• 17:13Wes Larson?

  Because they're smaller, the smaller ones are more.

• 17:16Jeff Larson?

  They're small, but they're tougher. The smaller, they're tougher.

• 17:19Wes Larson?

  Sure. Yeah, I do love scorpions, but not because of that, but maybe now.

• 17:23Jeff Larson?

  Maybe subconsciously, that's why you like them so much.

• 17:26Wes Larson?

  Could be true. I am the smallest of the three of us. Thanks, Jeff. I appreciate that. Uh, bark scorpions are generally mostly yellowish orange or light brown scorpions. They can get up to three inches long. They're found throughout the southern United States, Mexico, Central America, and Northern South America. But the one that's claimed the most fame in the US is the Arizona bark scorpion, which is found in the Sonoran desert and has the most potent venom of all native US scorpions. They are arachnids, which means they have eight legs and two body segments.

• 18:00Jeff Larson?

  Oh, really?

• 18:00Wes Larson?

  Cephalothorax and an abdomen. Yeah.

• 18:02Jeff Larson?

  So they're spiders?

• 18:04Wes Larson?

  They're closely related to spiders, correct?

• 18:06Mike Smith?

  And spiders aren't insects.

• 18:08Wes Larson?

  Not insects.

• 18:08Mike Smith?

  They're different. What the heck?

• 18:10Wes Larson?

  They are all invertebrates. They're all arthropods, but they are not insects. Unlike most scorpions, it's mostly spend their time on the ground or in burrows. Bark scorpions are really good climbers and they're often found inverted on trees, branches, rocks, human material, just about anything. So this is a scorpion that you'll sometimes see on the bottom side of branches or whatever. And that's why they call them bark scorpions, is they really like to like hang out on bark upside down and they'll catch moths and whatnot that are flying by.

• 18:42Jeff Larson?

  Cool.

• 18:42Mike Smith?

  Okay. So there could be like in the big arches down in the national parks in Utah. Could there be some scorpions hanging under the, under like the bottom of those?

• 18:52Wes Larson?

  Not, it's not impossible.

• 18:53Mike Smith?

  I like to think about them doing that.

• 18:55Wes Larson?

  Yeah, so do I, Mike.

• 18:57Jeff Larson?

  I think that's more of a spider spot and they just would make a web through the whole arch.

• 19:02Wes Larson?

  Dude, you gotta think they do that a lot. That's a good idea. Or swing through it.

• 19:07Jeff Larson?

  They'd catch so much food. Ah, scariest thing.

• 19:11Mike Smith?

  You probably ruined like a million webs swinging through that thing.

• 19:15Wes Larson?

  They're like, no, my dream house.

• 19:18Jeff Larson?

  My life's work.

• 19:20Mike Smith?

  That's probably the most valuable real estate for spiders now that you think about it, right?

• 19:24Wes Larson?

  Yeah, you could kill some billionaire spiders, probably.

• 19:27Jeff Larson?

  That's good.

• 19:28Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 19:29Jeff Larson?

  You should be high-fiving.

• 19:30Wes Larson?

  I am happy. Okay, I will. Next time I see you. They eat a wide variety of insects and invertebrates, and they're eaten by a number of different reptiles, spiders, mammals, and birds. They give live birth to their young, and females will carry up to thirty baby scorpions on their back until they reach their first molt, which their molt is when they shed their exoskeleton as they grow larger.

• 19:53Jeff Larson?

  Wow.

• 19:53Wes Larson?

  The exoskeleton doesn't grow, but their body does, so they have to shed it as they get bigger.

• 19:57Jeff Larson?

  That's like peak scariness when they have all the babies on them, I feel like.

• 20:01Wes Larson?

  Oh, yeah. That's creepy. That is a creepy picture. Yeah.

• 20:05Mike Smith?

  So they just molt off that layer of exoskeleton, or whatever it is that scorpions have. Is that the right word for it? Exoskeleton?

• 20:13Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 20:13Mike Smith?

  And then the babies are still just on that molten layer, and the mom just like takes off and that's it?

• 20:18Wes Larson?

  I don't know. No, I think it's when the babies reach their first molt that the mom stops carrying them.

• 20:22Mike Smith?

  Oh, okay.

• 20:23Wes Larson?

  It's not when mom reaches her first molt.

• 20:25Mike Smith?

  It would be like such a relief for the mom to just shed thirty babies at once and just like, oh.

• 20:31Wes Larson?

  The babies are like, Mom?

• 20:33Mike Smith?

  Yeah.

• 20:33Wes Larson?

  Are you okay?

• 20:36Wes Larson?

  All right. So they hibernate in the winter, often in groups, groups up to like forty or fifty scorpions.

• 20:42Jeff Larson?

  Oh, wow.

• 20:42Wes Larson?

  And they'll, yeah, they'll only leave their dens when temperatures in the evening are consistently in the low seventies. We're talking about Arizona bark scorpions right now. As I mentioned earlier, their venom is potent enough to cause extreme pain, terrible symptoms, and even death in humans. We're gonna dig into some stats quickly, because honestly, this was all very surprising to me. Paper in the Journal of Medical Toxicology titled Nationwide Scorpion Exposures, reported to US Poison Control Centers from 2005 to 2015. It's a long title. You guys should trim up your titles in the future.

• 21:17Wes Larson?

  They looked at all the reported stings nationwide during that eleven-year time period. They found 185,402 total reports of scorpion envenomations during those 11 years in the US, which is a crazy number. That's a lot, much more than that other paper reported for the US. I'm gonna have you guys guess the top three states for scorpion stings. And if you get them correct and in the right order, I'm gonna go outside right now and let one of Jesse's bees sting me.

• 21:49Jeff Larson?

  Do we both get to guess?

• 21:51Wes Larson?

  Uh, you both get to guess, but I'm not, I'm not gonna answer.

• 21:56Jeff Larson?

  Well, one of us gets, we'll both guess. And then if one of us gets it right, you gotta go get stung.

• 22:01Wes Larson?

  Yes, I really don't wanna get stung.

• 22:03Jeff Larson?

  I'm gonna go.

• 22:03Wes Larson?

  Correct. I've never wanted to be right more than.

• 22:05Jeff Larson?

  Correct order and states. I'm gonna go number one, California, number two, Arizona, number three, Utah.

• 22:13Wes Larson?

  Okay, Mike?

• 22:15Mike Smith?

  I'm gonna go Texas, Arizona, New Mexico.

• 22:19Wes Larson?

  Mike, you were the closest, but neither of you got it.

• 22:21Jeff Larson?

  Texas.

• 22:22Wes Larson?

  It's Arizona, number one, Texas, number two, Nevada, number three.

• 22:26Mike Smith?

  Nevada. Oh.

• 22:28Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 22:28Mike Smith?

  I should have known that. I got stung by so many scorpions there.

• 22:32Wes Larson?

  I really?

• 22:33Mike Smith?

  No.

• 22:34Wes Larson?

  Okay.

• 22:35Mike Smith?

  There are a bunch, though. We, me and my older brother caught like tons and put them in cages all the time.

• 22:40Wes Larson?

  It's, it's much more common than I thought it was. So more and more I'm believing people when they say they've been stung. I had a friend in Mexico that got stung while we were camping on the beach and he woke me up in the middle of the night like, hey, what do I do? And I just, I had no idea. So I was like, draw a circle around it and we'll check in the morning to see if it's spread. And then I just went and laid in my tent and was like, oh, I hope he's okay.

• 23:05Wes Larson?

  Cause it looked like a bark scorpion. Anyway, I think my confidence helped him calm down a little bit. Uh, love you, Kyle. All right. So in 2014 alone, according to this paper, over 16,000 cases were reported, which was far more than the total number of reports for snakes and spiders combined, which again is really shocking. And they stated that the Arizona bark scorpion was actually the leading cause of death by envenomation between 1929 and 1948. So more than snakes, more than spiders, more than anything else.

• 23:38Jeff Larson?

  Just for the United States?

• 23:39Wes Larson?

  It was, yeah, just in Arizona that between nineteen twenty nine and nineteen forty eight, it was the leading cause of death by envenomation.

• 23:46Jeff Larson?

  But in Arizona, not in like Africa.

• 23:50Wes Larson?

  Yeah, in Arizona. Alright, so Shirley Coyote Peterson has let one of these guys sting him, right?

• 23:55Jeff Larson?

  I mean, I wouldn't hold it past him.

• 23:57Wes Larson?

  He hasn't, but one of his collaborators on his channel Brave Wilderness did. And I will say, I watched this video, yeah, and I was riveted the entire time that I watched it. I know we give old Coyote a hard time sometimes, but his content can be very, very fun to watch. This guy's name is Mark Vance. He's on Brave Wilderness and he made an Arizona bark scorpion sting him. He's very serious about never doing it yourself. So if you're thinking about forcing potentially our most dangerous and painful scorpion to sting you, just go ahead and rethink it, guys. I know you guys had that in your mind.

• 24:38Jeff Larson?

  Don't do this at home.

• 24:40Wes Larson?

  Yeah. And if anyone out there is thinking about that, rethink it and maybe rethink a lot of things.

• 24:45Jeff Larson?

  I hope he was just like an intern with the Coyote Peterson. Like he's like, Coyote's like, you have to do this.

• 24:53Wes Larson?

  You gotta do something big to be on this show. Alright. Alright, so this guy ranked the sting on three factors: intimidation, pain, and aftermath. But I think they also should have had a category for how much you run around screaming afterward, because I think it would have been a ten out of ten. If they had that one as well.

• 25:13Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 25:13Wes Larson?

  Anyway, he said it was way worse than a bullet ant. I took a screenshot of his face so you guys could see just how bad it hurt. I'm gonna share it with you here.

• 25:23Jeff Larson?

  He took it on the face?

• 25:24Wes Larson?

  Uh, no.

• 25:26Mike Smith?

  Maybe he's just shouting or something.

• 25:29Wes Larson?

  I even took a screenshot of his face. You guys can see how bad it hurts.

• 25:35Wes Larson?

  That's, that's a face of a man deep in the throes of some ouchies, you know?

• 25:39Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 25:39Mike Smith?

  Good grimace.

• 25:40Wes Larson?

  Yeah. And he really was. He ended up giving it a nine point eight for intimidation, a 10 out of 10 for pain, and a 10 out of 10 for aftermath.

• 25:51Jeff Larson?

  I don't understand intimidation.

• 25:53Wes Larson?

  Because he was really nervous to let it sting him. It was like, he was so scared to do it. That he felt real, I know, I know. But this is YouTube.

• 26:04Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 26:07Mike Smith?

  Nine point eight.

• 26:08Wes Larson?

  Yeah. I know. You could say whatever you want.

• 26:11Mike Smith?

  Sophisticated scale to be measured.

• 26:12Jeff Larson?

  Yeah. You know, I'm not the one getting stung. I'll let him make the rules. I'm just saying, I don't completely get that one.

• 26:19Wes Larson?

  Yeah. It also got a 10 out of 10 for aftermath because the pain spread through his entire arm and didn't completely go away in his hand for over a week.

• 26:29Mike Smith?

  Oh.

• 26:30Wes Larson?

  He says it is his worst sting ever and his only sting where he considered going to the hospital. It was that bad.

• 26:37Mike Smith?

  Yeah. Our hand was it?

• 26:39Wes Larson?

  Uh, I can't remember.

• 26:40Mike Smith?

  Was it like his dominant?

• 26:41Wes Larson?

  I doubt he did.

• 26:42Jeff Larson?

  Why?

• 26:43Mike Smith?

  I was just curious.

• 26:44Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 26:47Mike Smith?

  Alright, there's some, well, you know.

• 26:50Jeff Larson?

  You know, you might wanna find a scorpion.

• 26:52Mike Smith?

  Right. You might have some of that soap from Sydney Sweeney too.

• 26:56Wes Larson?

  Paralyzed feeling with tingles.

• 27:00Speaker 03

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• 27:44Wes Larson?

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• 27:58Mike Smith?

  Right. This episode's brought to you by Quince. You know what I'm into recently? I'm big on clothes that feel good and last a long time. That's why I keep going back to Quince. Their lightweight layers and high-quality staples become my everyday essentials. Quince has all the things you actually want to wear this summer, like organic cotton silk polos, European linen beach shorts. Dude, those shorts, I'm telling you. And comfortable pants that work for everything from backyard hangs to nice dinners. It's so nice to have pants that you can just wear for any occasion, even when you just, a little secret here, sometimes I wear them to bed. And the best part is, everything with Quince is half the cost of similar brands. By working with top artisans and cutting out the middlemen, Quince gives you luxury pieces without the markup. And Quince only works with factories that use safe,

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• 29:25Mike Smith?

  She'd just been stung multiple times on one leg by the scorpion. The pain was immediate and unlike anything she had ever experienced before. Burning, crazy pain, like someone is ramming a hot iron into her leg. And her assailant is still a mystery. She still has no idea what's doing this to her. So she's screaming, she's writhing in her sheet. She's getting twisted up in the process. And suddenly she gets another sting on the other leg.

• 29:52Jeff Larson?

  Oh.

• 29:53Mike Smith?

  Her brain wanted to convince her that it was just a wasp or a red ant or something. But she knew just from the pain, whatever it was, it was bigger and much worse.

• 30:03Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 30:03Mike Smith?

  So Grayson runs over.

• 30:05Jeff Larson?

  That's how I felt last time I got stung by a bee. I was like, that's something worse than a bee in the nose, just a bee.

• 30:12Mike Smith?

  Yeah, just a bee.

• 30:13Wes Larson?

  Just a bee sting. When you get stung by a bee, you're like, I forget how bad this hurts. And like, this scorpion is like a hundred times worse. Yeah. So Grayson runs over with his headlamp. He starts searching through the covers, the sheets, looking for whatever was stinging Abby. And as he turns his head and the light falls on the sand, both Abby and Grayson see a small scorpion scuttling away. It's pincers up in the air.

• 30:40Jeff Larson?

  Really?

• 30:41Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 30:41Jeff Larson?

  So mad?

• 30:43Wes Larson?

  It was.

• 30:44Jeff Larson?

  I'd assume they do that one. It's like, yay, I got her.

• 30:52Wes Larson?

  So she has this sinking realization that she'd been stung multiple times by a scorpion. Just as Grayson reaches out with the flip flop and kills this tiny arachnid. So they call some of her friends over. One of them has a wilderness first responder certification. And he tells Abby that he had been stung by a scorpion before, that it was gonna really hurt really badly, and probably do some weird stuff to her joints. She might even get a fever, but that she'd be alright, because that was his experience. They decide to monitor her for anaphylaxis, so she doesn't have an allergic reaction. But when it seemed like she was in the clear for that, they put her on a cot. They told her she was bound to feel better in the morning, and that the pain would subside. But as Abby laid there in the dark, her tongue started to

• 31:36Wes Larson?

  feel kind of weird. And she thought it was strange that her tongue felt abnormal, but she'd taken an OxyContin, so she thought, maybe it was just the drug taking effect. Jeff, you've taken some of those probably recently. Do they have, does it, do they make your tongue feel weird?

• 31:52Jeff Larson?

  You know what? They don't, but I wouldn't be like shocked if my tongue did start to feel, I feel like it gives you dry mouth and stuff.

• 32:00Wes Larson?

  Okay. Yeah. So she thought that might be it. And that's when a crazy pins and needles sensation spread all over her body. And it felt like her face, her neck, her back, her arms, and her legs had all gone to sleep, and her chest was starting to get really tight. So I think, from what I've understood from reading these accounts of people being stung, it's like when you lay on your arm and you fall asleep. On your arm and you wake up and it's totally asleep, you know?

• 32:26Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 32:26Wes Larson?

  And then when it kind of starts to come back to life, you get that crazy pins and needles. It's like that, but times 10, like just a terrible sensation where any kind of touch causes crazy pain. So her chest is starting to get tight. She's still trying to talk herself down. She's telling herself, this must just be what venom feels like. I've never had a scorpion sting me before, so I don't have any reference. This is just what it feels like. Then she opened her eyes and the stars that were there just a few moments before were no longer there. And the reason for that is her eyes wouldn't track anymore. They were kind of just rolling around in her head and not focusing on anything because she had lost motor control over her eyes.

• 33:09Wes Larson?

  So understandably, she starts freaking out a little bit, which totally I a hundred percent the same thing would happen to me. One thing that we didn't really get into earlier was how scorpion venom works. Basically it attacks the way that your body sends messages. It's a neurotoxic venom. And specifically it's attacking your sodium ion channels that open and close to transmit messages. So you have these sodium ion channels and say your body's like, you need to feel some pain. They will open and deliver a quick pain message to you. Or if you need to feel like, you know, pins and needles or whatever, they are controlling those messages. So what happens when you get scorpion venom in you is they are just kind of left open. So you are feeling constant pain.

• 33:54Jeff Larson?

  Uh, how so? The spider sense?

• 33:57Wes Larson?

  Uh, no.

• 34:00Jeff Larson?

  Spidey sense?

• 34:01Wes Larson?

  Yeah, I know what Spidey senses. You keep saying it, but I don't think it's the same thing. If he was in constant debilitating pain and kind of like paralyzed, then I think it would be a perfect example. But I don't think that's what happened to him. So basically this pathway that controls stuff like motor function and pain is just stuck open. And signals like, hey, you should be feeling some pain or hey, maybe move your eyeballs this direction are just constantly going, which has to feel really insane.

• 34:32Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 34:33Wes Larson?

  So she's losing motor control. And she said not being able to move her eyes where she wanted them or speak or anything else was incredibly scary. Like being in a dream where she wanted to scream, but nothing would come out.

• 34:46Jeff Larson?

  She couldn't even scream.

• 34:48Mike Smith?

  Yeah, even though she had a mouth.

• 34:50Wes Larson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 34:51Mike Smith?

  It's like that book.

• 34:52Wes Larson?

  I read a story like that.

• 34:53Mike Smith?

  Yeah.

• 34:54Wes Larson?

  Harlan, what's his name again?

• 34:55Mike Smith?

  Ellison.

• 34:56Wes Larson?

  Yeah. She's also feeling incredible pain, strong burning pain at her three sting sites and then weird tingling supersensitivity on the rest of her body. So finally she decides she's in real trouble. She wakes Grayson up to try and tell him that she might need to be evacuated. And he said it sounded like she was drunk. She was slurring and couldn't really get the words out. She's not really able to communicate, so she had to let Grayson and the others figure out what to do. And they determined that it's the middle of the night. They wouldn't even be able to get us a helicopter in until morning and she'd probably be feeling better by then. So they just decide we're just gonna wait until morning to see how she is. So this decision is-

• 35:35Jeff Larson?

  Do they have another option?

• 35:37Wes Larson?

  I, I do think that if you were like in life or death, a helicopter can come in, in the night. You know, I don't think that's like a for sure no.

• 35:46Jeff Larson?

  They can fly at night?

• 35:47Wes Larson?

  Yeah, yeah, they can fly at night. Yeah. Uh, Abby didn't really want to be evacuated. She wanted to stay. So they also took that into, into effect. So it's made, the decision's made for her. She basically has to stay up all night with very little control of her body. She's feeling like a prisoner in her own mind. Her thoughts will spiral into this panic loop and she's getting, it's getting harder to breathe because of the anxiety. And she's having to fight to regain composure. And actually she draws on her experience with psychedelics because she experimented a little bit with them. And she'd had some bad trips. And if you're in the middle of a bad trip, what you have to tell yourself is this is going to pass. Like this is going to go away. I'm going to get back to normal.

• 36:32Wes Larson?

  And that's essentially how she was treating the scorpion sting in her mind was saying, this is just a bad trip. I'm going to feel normal again. And that really helped, which I thought was cool. Unfortunately, when morning came around, she was still having the same symptoms. And one of the people in the group who was an EMT came over and took her vitals, which all looked good. So basically her whole body is paralyzed, but her vitals are great. So it's- Kind of a hard decision whether or not to evacuate her. All right. So by seven, she starts seeing some small improvements. Her eyeballs stop roving as much. She could focus on faces and her speech is starting to improve. So they call some friends that worked in an ER on a sat phone. And they looked up her symptoms and they pretty much immediately said, this is not normal.

• 37:17Wes Larson?

  You need to evacuate her. This is not what a scorpion sting should do to a person. Then they looked a little bit harder and they learned that her symptoms actually were kind of normal if she were a child. But not for an adult, like children have this systemic reaction sometimes.

• 37:32Jeff Larson?

  So she lied about her age.

• 37:34Wes Larson?

  Yeah. So they were like, hey, are you actually eight? And she was like, yeah, I, you know, I, I needed the right opportunity to tell you guys. Finally, I am this, one of the senior editors at Outside Magazine and I'm an eight year old.

• 37:49Mike Smith?

  Go get her.

• 37:50Wes Larson?

  No, but the fact that they saw that this was at least in the realm of possibility for some human beings. Made them feel a little bit better.

• 37:58Jeff Larson?

  Three stings isn't like typical, right? You normally just get stung once.

• 38:03Wes Larson?

  Yeah. I mean, I don't know if it's atypical, but generally it's just once because people.

• 38:08Jeff Larson?

  Three seems like a lot.

• 38:09Wes Larson?

  Bling it off. Yeah. Three is a lot. It is.

• 38:11Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 38:12Mike Smith?

  Yeah. Are they injecting their venom similar to how snakes do? Like, are they controlling how much their load with the payload? I don't know what the word is for it.

• 38:22Wes Larson?

  Load, yeah. They do think that they have some muscular control over the amount of venom that's injected. But I think it may be, I don't know if it's quite as conscious as it is with snakes.

• 38:34Mike Smith?

  Okay. So maybe the second and third sting might have been like a diminished amount.

• 38:40Wes Larson?

  It could be.

• 38:41Mike Smith?

  It's just kind of uncontrolled, maybe.

• 38:43Wes Larson?

  They can deliver a dry sting, apparently. So.

• 38:46Mike Smith?

  Okay.

• 38:46Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 38:47Mike Smith?

  Shooting blanks.

• 38:48Wes Larson?

  Yeah. We, you know, we've all been there, right, guys?

• 38:52Mike Smith?

  Me?

• 38:52Wes Larson?

  Right, guys?

• 38:54Jeff Larson?

  Sponsored by Hims.

• 38:56Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 38:58Wes Larson?

  All right. She's still in a lot of pain. Anything that touches her skin makes her cry out or like burst into tears. But ultimately, she decided she didn't want to be evacuated. And everyone decided that they weren't going to evacuate her against her will. So she lays down in a raft and the whole day, anytime that anything would touch her or anything, she would start crying. But over time, her motor control is kind of coming back. She's still feeling a ton of pain, but she is slowly getting some of her feeling back.

• 39:29Mike Smith?

  I can't imagine a worse scenario to be in where any kind of disturbance will cause you pain than white water rafting to Grand Canyon.

• 39:38Wes Larson?

  By that night, she was able to walk and her pain was subsiding. It's an, that's an important note is that up until this point, she couldn't walk. By the next morning, she's pretty much back to normal. For a few weeks, her limbs and face would still fall asleep really quickly and her skin was really sensitive to pain. But those are really the only lasting side effects. Although there was one more lasting side effect. And that was that Abby got pretty obsessed with learning about scorpions because she was so perplexed about why her symptoms had been so bad. And she managed to preserve the scorpion in some formaldehyde, the one that stung her. And she did tons of research. But an episode of Ologies, which is a great podcast, I've been on it before. Ali Ward hosts it. Highly

• 40:21Wes Larson?

  recommended. It's a science podcast. That episode pointed her in the direction of an arachnologist, someone that specializes in arachnids. This person's name was Lauren Esposito, and she agreed that Abby was probably stung by an Arizona bark scorpion, but she said her symptoms were so intense that she really wanted to see the scorpion to make sure. So this Lauren Esposito explained that sometimes different species of bark scorpions from Mexico had made their way into the US on people. Like so if people went and visited Mexico or whatever and brought back luggage or something, scorpions might have made their way in. And it wasn't impossible that Abby had been stung by one of these Mexican scorpions.

• 41:04Wes Larson?

  And a few of those species actually have more Potent venom than the Arizona bark scorpion. So there's still bark scorpions, but they're different species that are even more potent. Or another option could be that she was just recovering from COVID and that's why she had such a crazy reaction. So Abby sent her some good photos of the scorpion and Lauren Esposito is pretty sure that she was stung by one of these more dangerous bark scorpions from Mexico. And that there may even be a small population of those scorpions that now live in the US.

• 41:36Mike Smith?

  Yeah. Okay. So

• 41:39Jeff Larson?

  Wait, but didn't you say she kept the scorpion?

• 41:42Wes Larson?

  Yeah, she did.

• 41:43Jeff Larson?

  So can't they just figure that out?

• 41:45Wes Larson?

  I, I think it's pretty figured out. I don't know if she sent it to this Lauren Esposito or not, but she sent really good photos of it. I think they're so similar though, like our bark scorpions and Mexican bark scorpions. That even if you, I think you would probably have to run like a DNA test on it. And maybe that was just like too much money and effort to solve this mystery. I don't know.

• 42:07Mike Smith?

  Okay.

• 42:07Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 42:08Mike Smith?

  I wonder what a 23andMe test would look like for a scorpion. They trace it back to like its dinosaur ancestors.

• 42:14Wes Larson?

  Tiny bit of its venom in that little tube.

• 42:17Mike Smith?

  Right. I wonder if the pictures were so nice, it makes me think she went to a professional and kind of had it posed. You know, with like the hands under the chin or something.

• 42:28Wes Larson?

  Like warm lighting.

• 42:30Mike Smith?

  Yeah.

• 42:31Wes Larson?

  I like that. Um, like the faded out picture of it in the background behind it.

• 42:36Mike Smith?

  Oh.

• 42:37Wes Larson?

  I like that.

• 42:37Mike Smith?

  That sounds great.

• 42:38Wes Larson?

  Let's have Braxton make one of those of a scorpion for us.

• 42:41Mike Smith?

  I will.

• 42:44Speaker 03

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• 43:14Jeff Larson?

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• 44:17Wes Larson?

  Alright, so that's our first story. Our second story is actually gonna be a little quicker, but it's from a friend of mine I really wanted to tell on this scorpion episode. Mike, get the hell out of here. We don't want you in this interview.

• 44:31Wes Larson?

  Alright, he's gone. He's running away.

• 44:33Jeff Larson?

  He, yeah, took that very literally.

• 44:37Wes Larson?

  Okay, so that's our first story, and for our second one, I wanted to have our friend Ian. How do you say your last name, Ian, by the way? Uh, Breeland. Breeland, cool. Ian Breeland.

• 44:48Jeff Larson?

  Kind of rhymes.

• 44:49Wes Larson?

  Yeah, it does kinda rhyme. It's a good name. Good job, Ian's parents. So we wanted to have Ian on to tell a quick story of his experience, because I know Ian was stung by a scorpion in Africa. Um, just a quick intro for Ian. Ian is a reptile expert. Would you feel comfortable calling yourself a reptile expert? Yeah, yeah, we can say proficient.

• 45:10Speaker 04

  Reptile enthusiasts.

• 45:12Wes Larson?

  Okay.

• 45:14Wes Larson?

  I would ask you reptile questions.

• 45:16Jeff Larson?

  That's what Wes says when I say I'm a bear expert.

• 45:22Wes Larson?

  Ian Spence, I mean, you're out there every day herping, taking people on tours, you know, guided herping adventures. And I think when we hear about tours, we often think of these more canned things, but your adventures are very much like you were in chest deep water, searching for anacondas kind of stuff, much more intense. But yeah, a conservationist, a science educator, someone that I've followed for a long time on Instagram because you have really incredible content. So we wanted to have you on to tell your story.

• 45:56Speaker 04

  Alright, thanks guys. I'm excited.

• 45:58Wes Larson?

  Yeah, and a quick tidbit too. Ian is going to be leading our Komodo trip in January. So we're really excited for that because.

• 46:05Jeff Larson?

  I have a quick question. So if you were just to get bit like randomly by a scorpion in any continent, is Africa like the last one you'd want to get stung? Not bit stung?

• 46:18Speaker 04

  Um, yeah, yeah. Actually, I would say absolutely. Africa, most, most invertebrates and vertebrates. Uh, I think those are like the final bosses in Africa.

• 46:28Wes Larson?

  Yeah. Well, we talked about this earlier, but there, there's like a number of deaths every year from scorpions. Like a, a much higher amount than I ever would have thought. And Northern Africa is responsible for the most out of, out of any, you know, section of the world. Northern Africa has the most deadly scorpion stings. I know yours was in Southern Africa. So I, I just love, we would love to hear your story. Hear a little bit about what happened, how it felt.

• 46:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. So I will, I will preface it with, I've never really thought too much about scorpion stings. You know, they're always, uh, present. They, they kind of go hand in hand with snakes and a lot of ecosystems. So we see a lot of scorpions. We interact with a lot of them. We get them in our shoes. And you know, it's pretty standard procedure to shake your shoes out anywhere that we are. Um, and, and it's kind of a part of everyday life, but I had never given them that much thought as far as the danger, the potential danger until this experience. So do you guys kind of want, want just like a play by play?

• 47:28Wes Larson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 47:29Speaker 04

  Okay, so, so we have to take it back to November twenty twenty four and Zimbabwe. We were running our fourth annual herping expedition there, which is my personal favorite. It's just Africa is another beast. You know, you're always looking over your shoulder. You truly are down in the food chain. We always have someone like with a huge rifle that hopefully will absolutely never have to use it. But that's the only place that we even come remotely close to having to have like security for animals. It's not for people. And that's what you're thinking of the whole time is the big stuff. So we had just had an amazing night. We found a rock python, the Southern African rock python, the biggest we've seen yet, which was like three feet. But they can get huge. They're like, they can get twenty plus feet and they're incredible.

• 48:14Speaker 04

  So I was really excited over the moon.

• 48:16Wes Larson?

  They love, they love eating kids in Canada, too, those rock pythons.

• 48:20Speaker 04

  Mm hmm. Yeah, that was news for me. That's crazy. And I believed it after seeing them in the wild. They are just, there's something about them, something that just keeps them kind of eternally mad. And it might just be all the big megafauna there. But yeah, so I was, to say the least, over the moon. And that might have led to a little bit of, you know, a little bit of euphoria taking over my logic. And I was barefoot. It was maybe one AM. Barefoot, I had just mixed, which is important to the story a little later. I had just mixed a gin and juice to celebrate this python. And I was gonna sip it while photographing it. And we had a couple other cool snakes. And, and it's pretty, it's pretty standard there. If we find something really cool, we're okay with keeping it just for a couple hours to photograph.

• 49:04Speaker 04

  And then we take it right back where we found it. And we have a lot of people that like doing macro photography. And we like to set up kind of little, little studios under the lodge. So there's a common living space. And that's where everyone kind of hangs out, you know, they check their phones, look at their pictures, they read. And it's, it's open air. There's, you can put your, your shoes at the entrance and you're actually not allowed to wear shoes in there. So we're always barefoot and you just don't, it feels safe because you're under a roof. But you don't really think about things coming in. And um I sat up to take my my cup of my my drink and walk over to this table this first step right when I stand up. I just felt and I was kind of had my heel under this couch that I'd been sitting on.

• 49:47Speaker 04

  And I just feel this shooting electrifying. Like it it felt like a shotgun just blew my foot off, honestly. Geez. And I couldn't I thought absolutely the first thing that came through my head is there's a puff adder under the the couch and I just got nailed. That's how painful it was. I never ever would have pinned a scorpion for being that on on contact painful, not like. Not like a bullet ant where it comes up and it lasts for hours on end. It was just immediate. Uh and I I just instinctively flung I yelled. Um and I flung my my ankle kind of trying to get whatever it was off me. Half expecting like a big fat viper to be hu- hanging on my heel and there was just a little. A little kind of blonde looking guy that flew off.

• 50:29Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, like maybe like two inches. I actually have um some really nice macro photos. I ended up keeping it in a. A glass and I can send those over to you guys, but uh it flung against the wall. And kind of smacks it and like falls down and I was like, oh, my god, it's scorpion. But it didn't really dawn on me that it could be something bad yet. And I just was like, well, the first thing is pretty basic knowledge, I think, to most people that aren't even wildlife people. You just walk up and uh you know, scorpions with the big tails tend to be uh just. In theory, more venomous, um and then with smaller pinchers as well. And I look and this thing is just textbook, like tiny, the world's tiniest pinchers, the world's fattest tail. And I just thought at that moment, I'm in for a pretty wild ride.

• 51:11Speaker 04

  Um so I immediately took a picture. I'm like shaking. I have all this adrenaline and I'm like, my anxiety is going through the roof. I'm shaking, taking a picture. No one else knew, by the way, besides like two clients that were in the in their room already photographing. They still they were preoccupied with conversation. Everyone else was either asleep or showering or doing their their their late night thing. And they had no idea. So I take a picture and I'm like, okay, I need to send this. I knew exactly who to send it to. Uh and it's one AM in Africa, but that was like. You know, some some normal hours in the US. I sent it to my friend. Matthew Nachasaki, who's like a invertebrate expert, he's he's like, I am with snakes, but that guy is even crazier with invertebrates. He's my go to for identifying any weird stuff we find in the field that's invertebrate.

• 51:56Speaker 04

  And I send it to him, not expecting a quick response. He gets a lot of identification texts like every day. And thank God, within like five minutes, I get a response. But no, it's probably within thirty seconds, honestly, because this is all, this is all happening. I'm describing it at like the most broken down speed because the entire encounter happened within probably thirty five minutes from start to finish. But he responds and he just said, he just said, I hope you're joking.

• 52:23Wes Larson?

  That's not a good text to get.

• 52:27Speaker 04

  A worse response?

• 52:29Wes Larson?

  Oh, man.

• 52:30Speaker 04

  So, so from there, um, I I immediately, I'm like, no, I'm not joking. I'm not pulling your leg. I just got stung by this. Uh, what is it? And and now I'm thinking the only scorpion that I'm two scorpions I'm aware of at that point in Africa is the death stalker. Uh, which I think is probably

• 52:45Wes Larson?

  Not a good name.

• 52:46Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, it doesn't sound like when I'd wanna be stung by.

• 52:51Speaker 04

  Uh huh. And I knew that one had a fat tail. I knew that it um, looked pretty similar. But I I didn't really know. I never looked up pictures of them. I just heard of

• 52:59Wes Larson?

  I think, I think that's the northern Africa one. Yeah.

• 53:02Speaker 04

  Uh huh. Okay. And I think there's like a few different species of death stalker that go down. Uh, and I know there is one in Zimbabwe, but I didn't know what it looked like. I didn't know anything. I just knew there was one in the area. Um, and so then I knew about the flat rock scorpion, which is like totally harmless. It has like a tiny little stinger. It doesn't even know how to use anymore. Um, and so he asked, okay, if you really got stung, you need to send me a top down picture. You need to send the the pedipalps. You need to send like the hairs on them. You need to send a face, a side profile. And I'm like this, at this moment, the, this is maybe forty, let's say forty five seconds to a minute in. Um, and I'm just feeling like I've been trying to find a good descriptor for the last few months for it.

• 53:43Speaker 04

  Um, it was like if you took a, I, I think it was like, if you take like a, a, a TIG, like whatever those welding machines are. Uh, like the home ones and you just started like welding straight through my heel and like pulling it up it through my calf. Uh, but very slow at like, at like tortoise speeds, but you can still feel it moving. But the weird thing, and the weird thing that really still stands out to me is that it was a border of pain. It was a wall of pain. But below that wall, once it had passed an area, that area was no longer in pain, but it was completely paralyzed. So there's nothing, nothing worked, which I've never felt. I was bit by a fertile ants in a Costa Rica, twenty seventeen, which is a pit viper.

• 54:25Speaker 04

  Nothing even close to this, just ethereal. It was like a psychedelic almost feeling. Uh, and, but it was physical. And so it's going up my, my, uh, ball of my foot and then it was into my calf. Within about two minutes and the calf started seizing. So I, I could feel and see the calf. I should have recorded, but it would have just been like shaky car crash footage, but it was like, uh, doing like this. And then it, it just went the, went the.

• 54:52Wes Larson?

  For audio listeners, he's like opening and closing his hands.

• 54:56Jeff Larson?

  Grabbing boobs.

• 54:57Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 55:02Speaker 04

  And it, it just, I wish that's what was happening. I was trying to like.

• 55:07Speaker 04

  It was, um, it, it was, uh, it was pulsing, pulsating and, um.

• 55:11Jeff Larson?

  Kind of cramping, you think?

• 55:13Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, cramping for sure. It was like, it was like a, when you hit like a cockroach and it's, it's like dying and it was like, that was my muscles kind of.

• 55:21Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 55:22Speaker 04

  And, um, and, and so at that point I'm looking up, I'm like speed educating myself on all of the scorpions that are possible. Um, and Matthew had come back and said, he's like, it could be a death stalker, but I need to look at it closer. And then he comes back and he gives me like two that are not as bad as death stalkers. And one was the eastern gnome at the hot and tota trilineata. And the other one was some, some other one that was worse. Uh, and this one had an antivenom. And taught it, I believe, did not have an antivenom. So it was basically a determination, like, do I need to get to the hospital like ASAP? Um, and to get this antivenom, or is there no point because there is no antivenom? So at that point, I'm like, I should go wake up my girlfriend who's asleep. She uh had just gone into our hut, which is like

• 56:07Speaker 04

  maybe fifty feet outside of the living area. There's like a little a little trail and it leads to our hut. I was like, okay, I gotta like hobble over there.

• 56:15Jeff Larson?

  Were you afraid of scorpions when you're walking over there?

• 56:19Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, this time.

• 56:21Jeff Larson?

  I would just have like that in my mind, like, there's gonna be scorpions this whole walk back.

• 56:26Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, yeah. And there are, dude. I can't even describe how many scorpions are there. And we're there. We try to aim our trips right when rainy season hits. So that's when like everything that is kind of creepy crawly starts act being active, surface active. So there's a lot. We already seen probably, we on average, we probably see ten to twenty scorpions a night hiking. So they're all over. So I was like looking and I'm like dragging my foot at this point. Um, just the pain was like shocking, electrifying. Uh, I've been stung by a lot of things. And it just, I, there's nothing that comes close. It it felt like it. It also, it was so painful in one area. The one area that was moving up my leg, that it was sending like shockwaves throughout my body of pain where I almost couldn't control like my own body.

• 57:09Speaker 04

  And I think that's where I started to understand people that like, almost like seize from pain. Uh, because it felt like I wanted, I wanted to just drop on the ground and um and like roll around like a, like a little twinkie.

• 57:21Wes Larson?

  Yeah, like Coyote Peterson.

• 57:24Wes Larson?

  No, I I actually, so on his channel, one of his like kind of underlings got stung by an Arizona bark scorpion, which from what I understand, a lot of these scorpions have very similar acting venom. And he said it was by far the worst pain he's felt from any sting, any animal. So that was a big surprise for me and and learning more about scorpions is how painful the stings actually are.

• 57:49Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. And I was, I was actually, this wasn't the first scorpion sting. I was stung by a, it was called like a western bark or something. It's not a bad bark. Uh, it's not the crazy ones, but I was stung by like the most common scorpion in Colorado. Whatever that is, uh, years ago. And that was until this one, that was the most painful sting I'd had. But it was only on my finger and it only affected my finger. And it was just, but my finger, it felt like it was being dipped in ice water for like, like forty eight hours. And then it just dissipated.

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• 58:47Wes Larson?

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• 59:30Wes Larson?

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• 1:00:05Speaker 04

  Yeah, so I crawled in my, kind of not crawl, I like hobble to my girlfriend's hut. And I kind of gently like wake her up and I was like, I really don't want to freak her out because I wasn't freaked, I wasn't too freaked out, but I was, I was definitely fearing that like if it was worst case scenario, then something could happen. So she needs to know. And I've texted my mom at this point, which never happens. Like no news is good news on our trip. For my family. Um, and I texted her like she had called me, my dad's calling me, my sister's, they're thinking already, I tried to underplay it, but just the fact that I had simply texted them about an incident. Was enough to spark like a full emergency response. So, um, I'm wake, I'm waking her up. I'm like, hey babe.

• 1:00:44Speaker 04

  I just, um, I just, you know, you know, I got, um, tagged by like, not the best scorpion they got stung by. But we don't really know yet. And, uh, it was like, you, you know, you can go back to sleep if you want, but just so you know, that's what's happening and I'm gonna try to get back. But in, within those five minutes, like I've never had a venom work this fast, at least like it's through such a wide range of my body. Within those five minutes, um, of waking her up and hobbling to the hut, which I think made it even worse, all that movement. Uh, and my heart is really beating and I was starting to get kind of sweaty. Um, I'd like, it was something that like, I felt like, I felt like I could pass out at any moment, but it wasn't systemic. I think it was more anxiety.

• 1:01:26Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:27Speaker 04

  Um, it's hard, it's hard to differentiate between the two, you know, and down to the wire and you're in that moment. Uh, it's really hard to tell, like even a car crash, it's hard to tell, like, did my, I break my arm or am I just like thinking that I just almost died because I did. So.

• 1:01:41Jeff Larson?

  It's very considerate to give her the option to go back to sleep.

• 1:01:45Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:01:46Jeff Larson?

  It's like, I might die, but like, I don't want to keep you up.

• 1:01:51Speaker 04

  Yeah. You know, that's what I thought too, but she actually got mad at me because she's like, how can you think? That I would want to go back to sleep after you got stung by a scorpion. You think I'm that terrible of a person?

• 1:02:05Jeff Larson?

  That's big too.

• 1:02:07Speaker 04

  So she of course hops right out of bed and, um, at that moment though, um, within those five minutes, I actually found that I couldn't walk back to the hut. I was more, um, my entire leg up to my groin was completely, uh, out of, out of action. And I tried like even pain aside, I would just, because there is no pain under, under that wave that is almost like a, like a band of pain. It's just feeling less like I could punch my leg and I didn't feel it. Um, so because of that, it was a noodle and I couldn't, I couldn't walk. Um, I could like limp barely. So she takes me kind of like firefighter carrying me over to, um, the hut. And by the time we get there, she lays me down, we start elevating my leg. We had no idea what to do. But we did at this point, maybe seven minutes in, we finally got like a hundred percent ID from Matthew.

• 1:02:52Speaker 04

  He's like, this is definitely Easter nomad.

• 1:02:55Jeff Larson?

  Where's the scorpion?

• 1:02:57Speaker 04

  The scorpion, I had um just taken a little cup, a glass, and I had put it over it on the ground. So it was, and it was surprisingly, it was fine. I flung it into the wall at like full speed, but it it was okay.

• 1:03:08Jeff Larson?

  They're tough, yeah.

• 1:03:10Wes Larson?

  So he said, he said definitely an eastern nomad, okay.

• 1:03:13Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, he was like, I can give you, you know, ninety nine point nine percent, that's eastern nomad. So um I had never heard of it, and um I didn't know what that really meant, so I asked, I kept trying to ask what it meant, and he was just like, I was like, tell it to me straight. Do I need to go to the hospital? This is really poorly uh managed hospital in Victoria Falls that really isn't probably gonna have much to offer? Or should I try to ride it out? Like, not like clinician to like patient, but um like friend to friend that has both experienced a lot? Like in the field, like what would you do? And he, so he tells me, he sends me a voice note, he's like, listen, I would um, I would elevate the leg, I would lay down. He's like, we don't know if that helps, but it doesn't hurt.

• 1:03:56Speaker 04

  Um and monitor your heart rate, uh monitor your blood pressure, your breathing, your respiratory rate, um and if you feel anything systemic beyond uh clammy and sweaty, then then rush to the hospital.

• 1:04:09Wes Larson?

  So that would be like reduced breathing, tightness in your chest kinda stuff?

• 1:04:14Speaker 04

  Yeah, uh droopy eyes, um discoloration in my like mucous membranes, you know, stuff like that. Um and yeah, probably the highest, the biggest one would be like shallow breathing or something, so. Uh we were monitoring, it turned out I did have like pretty immediately, once I was laying down, and I didn't feel anxious anymore, so I'm pretty sure it was the venom at that point, I had tachycardia. Really rapid heart rate. Um and nothing beyond that, though, it was just that my leg was paralyzed, uh I felt, but I was worried at this point, because it's like the pain has now reached past the groin. And you know, just basic anatomy, like now it's flushed into my whole body. And I don't know much about venom, uh maybe more than your average person, but I figure once it reaches past your leg, like it's going into the meat of the body, the important stuff.

• 1:04:57Speaker 04

  So like one good thing would could be that it's getting diluted in your body, but the bad thing could be like now it's going into your heart, you know, your organs, your whatever. What may have you and um so so I lay down um they're all urging me to go to the hospital. We woke up the the truck driver. Um and it was about an hour drive to the hospital. That's the other thing. It's a solid hour if you're booking it. Uh and there's like dirt roads, you know, you'd be bouncing around um. And and it's, I mean, a hospital is a stretch. It's more of a clinic. Uh they don't even have antivenom for any of the snakes that we are there uh looking for. And we'll just call ahead and check. So it's it's very poorly uh managed, which you know is just due to a lack of resources out there.

• 1:05:37Speaker 04

  It's really sad that I I wish someone could do something about that, because that's a that's a consistent pattern throughout all of uh Africa. So um yeah, so I'm laying down. Uh I start feeling not so much worse. Uh I actually started feeling better at about the fifteen to twenty minute mark, and that's what Matthew had said. He's like, the venom works pretty quick. Um probably one of the quickest, I think, for no-toxic venom. So he he said to really, like, if you manage to be okay for like thirty to forty minutes, you're probably just riding it out and you're gonna be fine. So I'm laying down. I'm starting to feel a little better um. And this guy comes up, the truck driver, and he tells me, you know, for people out there, like for me, this was like a crazy experience. That was probably,

• 1:06:19Speaker 04

  hopefully, once in a lifetime. For people living out there, you know, most people know someone that's been stung by a pretty gnarly scorpion. So, yeah, so he's telling me, like, like, in fact, our our gardener, I came to find out, uh they're they're like nephew had died from a scorpion. But a lot of, they have all these home remedies um that really apparently work wonders, you know, which I'm very skeptical of, because for snakes, a lot of the time, there's like witchcraft and they're talking about all kinds of things that aren't medically um.

• 1:06:47Wes Larson?

  Yeah, we met with the a witch doctor in Zimbabwe that said he could cure a black mamba bite. I was like, eh.

• 1:06:54Speaker 04

  Right, uh huh. Yeah, yeah, you know, I mean, so I was skeptical. Um but but what he said, he said, there's nothing you can really do, which actually was, I think, spot on. Uh but he said the one thing you don't, you do not want to do, that will make it very much worse, uh is drinking juice or drinking alcohol. He's like, just drink water.

• 1:07:17Wes Larson?

  Meanwhile, you've got a gin and juice.

• 1:07:19Speaker 04

  Uh huh, which I hadn't touched yet. Um, so I'm, I'm laying down and I'm like, okay, fine. I guess not. Uh, and at this point, we're kind of laughing. We're like, you know, I'm sweating buckets. Uh, my heart rate is crazy and I'm like, I'm kind of almost euphoric because of it. I'm like, that's a crazy. I'm like, this was crazy. This was wild. This is insane. And we're all like cracking jokes about it and like.

• 1:07:39Jeff Larson?

  I gotta try that.

• 1:07:41Speaker 04

  Mm hmm. Yeah, it's kind of like, uh, it's kind of just like a, an African like bush drug in a way. That's what I thought.

• 1:07:49Jeff Larson?

  Alaska, yeah.

• 1:07:51Speaker 04

  And then, um, I, I made the mistake of thinking it's where the thirty minute mark and I still can't feel my leg, but the pain is gone. So I, so I made the mistake of thinking like, okay, well, we're probably fine. It's gonna come back in a little while, you know, it was enough. It was gnarly venom at that point. I'm already impressed, like incredibly impressed by this sting. Um, but I'm thinking I'm through it. So I sat up, um, and at this point, people are kind of like talking amongst themselves. They're not so much like cock eyeing me, making sure I'm not like, nothing is getting worse. And, um, that's when I set up and I start texting people, uh, started texting my mom. I'm like, I think I'm okay. I'm fine. Uh, I think I text Matthew. I'm like, dude, that stuff's crazy.

• 1:08:34Speaker 04

  I'm gonna learn more about scorpions now. And then, um, I take my gin and juice. I'm like, I'm like, cheers, guys. That was wild. And then I chug the gin and juice. And, um, then I laid and we all are like, yay. And then I, I lay back down and like thirty seconds later, I'm, I'm DMing someone and my, my hands, like first the screen stopped working on my, on my, uh, phone. And then everything started to get blurry on the screen. Like I couldn't read anything, but I thought that it was, I thought that it was, um, because the, my phone was wet and it was just causing some glitch. But then I'm like, why is my phone wet? So I look at, and it's dark. It's very dimly lit. So it's not so easy to like, see everything. And then, uh, I'm looking at my thumbs and I, I'm literally, I, I,

• 1:09:19Speaker 04

  I've never seen anything like it. Uh, there was like droplets of water coming off my thumbs. Like it was, I was sweating so profusely off my hands. Uh, that it was just pouring sweat like it was an active drip of sweat.

• 1:09:31Wes Larson?

  Really?

• 1:09:31Speaker 04

  And right when I saw that, I think it just freaked me out so badly. I was like, oh my God, I'm not through it. This is the end and and that and so uh then I sit up and I'm like, guys, I'm like, I'm I'm not feeling okay. And then I start getting dizzy. I got like vertigo and then last thing I saw, I just, everything went black like a hole like the end of of uh like Bugs Bunny style.

• 1:09:52Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:53Speaker 04

  And then boom, I was out and um passed out, fell back on the on the chair. And I came to um maybe thirty seconds later, pretty quick. Uh, and everyone's around me. They're they're like, oh, my God, they're they're like calling the truck driver. They're like, we're gonna carry him like this is this is it. It just like got real. You know, he's probably like getting his respiratory, his cardiac like issues, like something's happening. Um, and then and I came to, but um there was a there there was a feeling at that moment, of course, that had all gone down and I'm terrified. But at that moment, it felt almost like um like there was a wave of, I just kind of like bodied it and now it's over. So everyone is calling for the hospital now. They're like, this is systemic.

• 1:10:36Speaker 04

  You had just like pretty much every bad symptom except for like respiratory paralysis. So we gotta go like you have bad vision, you blacked out, you're profusely sweating, your blood pressure just freaking dropped like to the bottom of the barrel. Um, and then uh I was, I was like, I was like, but I woke up and now I feel okay. We also called the hospital. They didn't have any ventilators and if I was paralyzed, that's something that would keep me alive. So at that point, I'm like, guys, if it happens one more time, I will, no questions asked, I'll go to the hospital, but it didn't happen one more time. Long story short, we stay up another hour. My girlfriend monitored me um and I I ended up going back to bed at around three AM

• 1:11:19Speaker 04

  and uh couldn't sleep too much. The pain came back once my legs started getting feeling again. Um, but I I I couldn't sleep for a while, but then once I fell asleep, I woke up the next morning like nine AM like a spring chicken. It's crazy.

• 1:11:31Wes Larson?

  That is crazy. Huh. Yeah, that's wild. The sweating, like having sweat pouring out of your fingertips has to be such a wild like sensation and thing to see.

• 1:11:42Speaker 04

  I I yeah, I can't, I can't describe it like anything. I can't really think of, I mean, I don't know, maybe like, maybe crack does that. Who knows?

• 1:11:52Wes Larson?

  Well, that's great. I'm glad you had someone on call to let you know like what kind of scorpion it is not that it really ended up mattering a lot because you weren't close to anti venom or anything. Yeah, insane it. This episode like learning more about scorpions has made me realize that they're not to be trifled with. I kind of always thought it was like a wasp sting or something and you kind of just shrug them off. And I know there's plenty of species that are like that, but the bad ones are are really bad. And I think your story, when I saw that I I was like following along as it was happening to you. And I remember thinking like, oh shit, this is this is actually serious. Like he got a real sting.

• 1:12:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, it was. It was no joke. I I will say the big thing that came out of this for me was a totally newfound interest in scorpions. I love them. I started. Now I've learned like almost every species in Zimbabwe and the families, the different branches they took in evolution, like the niches they now fill. It's so cool. There's actually a scorpion there that squirts that can like spray venom defensively.

• 1:12:58Jeff Larson?

  Yeah. What do they squirt it out of?

• 1:13:00Speaker 04

  Oh, their stinger. They just pressure their stinger. There it's like a it's like a burrowing scorpion and they can like squirt it only like like two feet. But it's crazy.

• 1:13:08Wes Larson?

  It's really cool.

• 1:13:09Jeff Larson?

  Wait, so the place you were staying like made you walk around barefoot?

• 1:13:13Speaker 04

  In the living area. Yeah, but um, and you know, we thought it's

• 1:13:17Jeff Larson?

  Seems like maybe something to like reconsider.

• 1:13:21Speaker 04

  Yeah, I agree. To be fair, I think you could have worn slippers or something, but I just need to buy like some bunny slippers for Africa.

• 1:13:29Wes Larson?

  Yeah. Well, Ian, we really appreciate it. If anyone wants to check out Ian, his at on Instagram is life dot of dot Ian. And like I said, I've been following Ian for a long time because you have incredible stories, incredible photos, incredible adventures. So um, yeah, and then your company is called Serpentine and you do herping trips. For people who don't know what herping is, it's looking for reptiles and amphibians, but you also obviously are looking for anything else that you see out there. You're a naturalist. Yeah. Anything else you want to say before before we move on?

• 1:14:05Speaker 04

  Uh, thanks for having me, guys. And yeah, it's really great to relive that fun drama.

• 1:14:14Jeff Larson?

  Reliving it with us.

• 1:14:16Wes Larson?

  Yeah. Excited for Komodo. Yep.

• 1:14:19Speaker 04

  Yes, Komodo. So excited. It's my top dream of, I mean, it's, it's everything I'm looking forward to right now. So excited.

• 1:14:27Jeff Larson?

  We're, we're expecting you to get like stung a bit by something.

• 1:14:31Wes Larson?

  Yeah, we need more contact.

• 1:14:32Speaker 04

  Oh, God.

• 1:14:34Speaker 04

  We'll see.

• 1:14:35Jeff Larson?

  All right.

• 1:14:36Wes Larson?

  All right. See you.

• 1:14:37Jeff Larson?

  Thanks, Ian.

• 1:14:37Speaker 04

  Thanks, guys. Bye bye.

• 1:14:39Wes Larson?

  Bye.

• 1:14:40Jeff Larson?

  All right.

• 1:14:41Wes Larson?

  Okay.

• 1:14:42Jeff Larson?

  Great. Mike, what did you think of that interview?

• 1:14:45Mike Smith?

  Holy cow. How's he still alive?

• 1:14:50Wes Larson?

  Uh, thank you, Ian, for telling your story.

• 1:14:53Jeff Larson?

  Crazy it wasn't a scorpion, huh, Mike?

• 1:14:55Mike Smith?

  Yeah, that's, that was the craziest part to me. It was actually a shark.

• 1:15:01Jeff Larson?

  Mike didn't hear it, is why.

• 1:15:03Wes Larson?

  The funny thing is Mike will actually probably never hear that because he doesn't even edit our episodes anymore.

• 1:15:11Mike Smith?

  Sorry, Ian. Not interested.

• 1:15:13Jeff Larson?

  He's our Mike guy.

• 1:15:14Wes Larson?

  Do you guys have any questions about scorpions before we get into our categories?

• 1:15:19Mike Smith?

  I do about Invenimation. So you were saying there are monitoring for early signs of anaphylactic shock? What are those signs you're going to be looking for exactly?

• 1:15:30Wes Larson?

  Swelling of the like throat or like your, um, why can't I think of what your airways? So like any, it'd be the same kind of symptoms you'd see in any like strong allergic reaction.

• 1:15:42Mike Smith?

  Like labored swelling.

• 1:15:43Wes Larson?

  Labored breathing, puffiness, redness. Yeah, like anaphylactic shock kind of stuff. So I don't want to, I don't want to say anymore because I'm not sure exactly, but I think, I think they were mostly.

• 1:15:56Mike Smith?

  Specific to it.

• 1:15:57Wes Larson?

  Yeah, I think they're mostly just probably monitoring how she was able to breathe.

• 1:16:01Mike Smith?

  Cool.

• 1:16:01Jeff Larson?

  Do people, do people still die from scorpions in the United States?

• 1:16:07Wes Larson?

  Yeah, so this paper, the first paper that I referenced said that on average, one person a year dies. Um, the second paper that I referenced said in that 11 year period, they thought they found seven deaths in the US. So which would be a little less than one per year. But yes, people do die. It's often children, though.

• 1:16:25Jeff Larson?

  With COVID?

• 1:16:26Wes Larson?

  It could be children with COVID or just dumb children, you know?

• 1:16:30Mike Smith?

  Jeff's, uh, he had a story about one of those.

• 1:16:34Jeff Larson?

  I did.

• 1:16:34Wes Larson?

  I'm just kidding.

• 1:16:35Mike Smith?

  Yeah, couldn't even identify that he was looking right at the canyon.

• 1:16:39Wes Larson?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:16:39Mike Smith?

  Looking at it.

• 1:16:40Wes Larson?

  It's true.

• 1:16:41Mike Smith?

  That's a dumb guy.

• 1:16:44Wes Larson?

  Uh, no, I, the thing that's interesting and Ian talked about this a little bit is that there's a difference between having a localized reaction. So you have like pain that's localized to the site, the, the sting site and um, like some tingling or numbness or paralysis or whatever right there and a systemic reaction, which is one that actually is starting to affect your whole nervous system. So Abby had a systemic reaction because she was losing motor control. She was like, these different things were happening to her whole nervous system and children often have systemic reactions, which can lead to like cardiac arrest or a pulmonary edema or something like that, that I, that actually kills them, you know?

• 1:17:28Wes Larson?

  But there's too many kids, so it doesn't matter. I'm just kidding.

• 1:17:32Jeff Larson?

  Well, the.

• 1:17:32Wes Larson?

  It's terrible.

• 1:17:35Jeff Larson?

  I don't blame the scorpion either.

• 1:17:37Wes Larson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:17:38Jeff Larson?

  Because I think he was trying to sting the guy who probably was a bit bigger and wouldn't have been as much like a kid, you know?

• 1:17:47Wes Larson?

  Yeah, that's.

• 1:17:48Jeff Larson?

  But then the guy flipped it onto the girl. So scorpion probably still thought of stinging that guy.

• 1:17:54Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:54Jeff Larson?

  So it's like.

• 1:17:55Wes Larson?

  It's like, fine, I guess I'll sting her instead.

• 1:17:57Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:58Wes Larson?

  Yeah. Good luck. Yeah.

• 1:17:59Mike Smith?

  Maybe it swung both ways. I like that about scorpions, I think.

• 1:18:04Jeff Larson?

  Doesn't care if you're male or female.

• 1:18:06Mike Smith?

  No.

• 1:18:06Jeff Larson?

  Happy pride month.

• 1:18:08Mike Smith?

  Exactly.

• 1:18:09Jeff Larson?

  To score, shout out scorpions.

• 1:18:11Wes Larson?

  Shout out scorpions.

• 1:18:14Wes Larson?

  I'm glad you brought that up, though. Happy pride month to all of our listeners. We here at Tooth and Claw, we love all of our listeners regardless, sexual orientation, gender orientation, whatever. You're all welcome here this year.

• 1:18:28Mike Smith?

  Hell, yeah.

• 1:18:28Wes Larson?

  Podcast. We love you all.

• 1:18:29Mike Smith?

  Party on.

• 1:18:30Jeff Larson?

  L's, B's, G's, Q's.

• 1:18:34Wes Larson?

  We want you all. We love you all. Yeah. All right. Let's get to our categories.

• 1:18:39Jeff Larson?

  Scorpions.

• 1:18:40Wes Larson?

  Scorpions, yes.

• 1:18:42Jeff Larson?

  S's.

• 1:18:43Mike Smith?

  S's.

• 1:18:45Wes Larson?

  All right, uh, our categories today are split into two. So we're gonna have a special set of categories that I'm excited about, but first we're gonna do some classics. First one is your favorite scorpion from pop culture.

• 1:18:59Jeff Larson?

  I can go last because I have a bunch and I feel like one of them everyone has.

• 1:19:03Wes Larson?

  Okay, uh, I'll go then.

• 1:19:05Mike Smith?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:06Wes Larson?

  I'm, I, I'm.

• 1:19:07Jeff Larson?

  You always go first.

• 1:19:08Wes Larson?

  That's not true, but I, I do think about that because we got a review about that once. Lately I've been really, yeah, I don't actually.

• 1:19:20Jeff Larson?

  After I said I'd go last.

• 1:19:22Wes Larson?

  Write us a nice review. Yeah. So I picked Clash of the Titans. Both the original one from the early eighties and the redone one in like 2010 or whatever with Sam Worthington. There's a great scorpion scene in that movie. The original one is kinda hokey, but really fun. And then actually, I really liked, the redone movie is like pretty cheesy and not a great movie, but I really liked the scorpion scene in it. And I remember the trailer had a used song over the scorpion part and it, it like matched up really well. So. And I, I too have a, an honorable mention, but I'll wait until Jeff's done to see if anyone's used it.

• 1:20:02Mike Smith?

  I'm gonna go with, it's a little folk story called The Scorpion and the Frog. You guys familiar with this one? Where the frog swims the scorpion across the river and the scorpion's like, I promise I'm not gonna sting you if you help me get across the river. And then it stings the frog like in the deepest part of the river and they're both gonna die and the frog's just like, are you fucking serious dude? And the scorpion's just like, that's what we do.

• 1:20:26Wes Larson?

  Scorpion.

• 1:20:27Mike Smith?

  Yeah, it's what we do. It's the scorpions we sting. Should've, should've known. And it's like, I don't know. I just, I respect that.

• 1:20:33Jeff Larson?

  What is the message? Like, don't help anyone?

• 1:20:37Mike Smith?

  That's what I took from it.

• 1:20:38Wes Larson?

  The message is like, what I took from it when it, cause that was like a church thing that we'd hear sometimes too. But I think it was like an American kid with a rattlesnake and it was like a rattlesnake's a rattlesnake.

• 1:20:49Jeff Larson?

  Too cold.

• 1:20:50Wes Larson?

  Yeah, the whole thing that they used in church was like a sin is a sin, you know?

• 1:20:54Mike Smith?

  Oh, really? I don't know.

• 1:20:56Jeff Larson?

  Because it's gonna sting ya.

• 1:20:58Wes Larson?

  It was gonna get you no matter what and.

• 1:21:01Mike Smith?

  There you go.

• 1:21:01Jeff Larson?

  I don't know. I.

• 1:21:03Wes Larson?

  Don't love this. Yeah, I don't love the moral behind it, though.

• 1:21:07Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, it's like.

• 1:21:12Jeff Larson?

  Trust your sins is what it says. Hear it here first.

• 1:21:16Wes Larson?

  Lean into him.

• 1:21:17Jeff Larson?

  All right. Well, I mean, I feel like I have to just say Scorpion from Mortal Kombat.

• 1:21:22Wes Larson?

  Yeah. I didn't think of that. That's a great pick.

• 1:21:27Jeff Larson?

  So he's so cool in the first.

• 1:21:30Mike Smith?

  Like get over here and then he gets you to come over there.

• 1:21:33Wes Larson?

  Get over here. That's my favorite.

• 1:21:37Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, I thought you'd take it. And then in like the video game, he was the coolest character. I mean, now I like Sub-Zero just because I'm a little obsessed with Ice Powers. He's been my favorite, but I still think Scorpion might be cooler.

• 1:21:54Wes Larson?

  He was cool. The newest movie they did too, the one from.

• 1:21:58Jeff Larson?

  That Sub-Zero is way cooler than that.

• 1:22:00Wes Larson?

  No.

• 1:22:01Mike Smith?

  Scorpion's played by that one guy. Mike, who's that guy? I always forget. But he's cooler.

• 1:22:06Wes Larson?

  He's in Shogun two.

• 1:22:11Jeff Larson?

  You sold me.

• 1:22:16Jeff Larson?

  But also Sub-Zero is played by that other guy, so.

• 1:22:22Jeff Larson?

  I also wanted to shout out the Ryan Gosling's jacket in the movie Drive.

• 1:22:28Wes Larson?

  Oh, yeah, I thought of that.

• 1:22:29Jeff Larson?

  It's a great.

• 1:22:32Wes Larson?

  Great jacket. Another shout out I had was Honey, I Shrunk the Kids when they fight that big old scorpion.

• 1:22:39Mike Smith?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:39Jeff Larson?

  Oh, really?

• 1:22:40Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:40Mike Smith?

  Dwayne The Rock Johnson. That's where the Scorpion King first showed up.

• 1:22:44Wes Larson?

  Oh, yeah. Scorpion King, Dwayne. That was the first movie I ever saw him in, even though he's mostly CG the whole time.

• 1:22:51Mike Smith?

  What if he, the Scorpion King was just like teased first in Honey, I Shrunk the Kids? Like that was actually where his story started.

• 1:23:00Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:00Mike Smith?

  That'd be great.

• 1:23:01Wes Larson?

  Oh, that would be great.

• 1:23:03Mike Smith?

  Yeah, sure.

• 1:23:04Wes Larson?

  Okay, so our next one we're gonna do is what would Mike and Jeff do? I'm gonna let you guys decide where, where you're gonna pick that for this story.

• 1:23:12Jeff Larson?

  I mean, I don't wanna get helicoptered out. I wanna be able to raft the Grand Canyon, but that's a tough.

• 1:23:19Wes Larson?

  Yeah, what are you doing?

• 1:23:20Jeff Larson?

  Well, if I'm the guy, I'm definitely still flicking it on her. Cause that's funny.

• 1:23:26Wes Larson?

  It is a good prank.

• 1:23:29Wes Larson?

  Are you sticking around?

• 1:23:30Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, I don't know what, I don't know, I don't know what else you could do different.

• 1:23:35Wes Larson?

  Okay, Mike, do you have an answer?

• 1:23:37Mike Smith?

  I don't know, I kinda, it seems like no one really knew what the, what it was until it was too late. But if I know something's on me and stinging me, I'm doing the roll move instead of the flick move.

• 1:23:47Wes Larson?

  So you're just rolling around?

• 1:23:49Mike Smith?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:49Wes Larson?

  Yeah. I like that. Okay. Um, from what I understand, what you should do with scorpion stings is pretty similar to any kind of envenomation. Is you should monitor again for an allergic reaction and then you should just get to help as quickly as possible. If you are stung by a scorpion that you suspect, especially being an Arizona bark scorpion, you should probably get it checked out.

• 1:24:11Jeff Larson?

  But what if you're in the bottom of the Grand Canyon?

• 1:24:14Wes Larson?

  Then I think if you don't feel like going to the hospital, you should wait until you start to see symptomatic or systemic symptoms. So if you start losing motor control, or if you start having symptoms like that, you probably should get to help. Like Abby made it out and I'm, you know, luckily she didn't have anything crazy or happen. She could have had a heart attack or she could have like lost breathing. And that could happen really quickly. So you should try and get to help if you think that you might be having a systemic reaction. There is anti-venom, there is anti-venom for a lot of different scorpion venoms. So you can potentially get some venom treatment too. So again, there's not much you can do.

• 1:24:59Jeff Larson?

  The smart thing would be to helicopter out.

• 1:25:01Wes Larson?

  Yeah, stay calm. And the smart thing, if you're having a systemic reaction, I wouldn't helicopter out if I just got stung by a scorpion. But if I started losing motor. Control, I would really think about it hard. So the next category we're gonna do, since this is a new animal, we're gonna do cage match. So. Okay. Yeah. I think most of our animals kill the scorpion. I think that there are some that it probably would really hurt, especially the primates like our chimps and stuff. I have something I've learned about venom is that there are certain animals whose venom only like works on certain types of other animals.

• 1:25:41Wes Larson?

  So I'm guessing this wouldn't do much to our reptiles. I think most of our reptiles could eat the scorpion without having any kind of effect. Okay. On their body, but I think our mammals.

• 1:25:51Wes Larson?

  Don't they like kill lizards and stuff though? I don't know. Probably. I think they mostly just eat insects. I don't know though, but I know they're eaten by a lot of reptiles. So I'm guessing they don't have a lot of effect, but I think mammals do feel a strong effect from their venom. So I think there are a number of our animals that a scorpion could potentially kill, but it would also die. So I don't think it's winning against many besides maybe some of our spiders. Yeah. Yeah. The funnel web? Yeah. Black. Funnel web. I wonder what like an ura kanji jellyfish in a scorpion fight would look like. That's an interesting matchup. Scorpion probably wins. Who knows? Right.

• 1:26:31Wes Larson?

  Our cage match is getting tricky. I don't know. Okay. All right. So our next categories are the ones I'm excited for. We here at Tooth and Claw, we really love partnering with Element. Because today's episode is focused on a desert animal, we thought it would be a really good opportunity to talk about some element related categories. Because element is all about proper hydration. And if you're in the desert, you really want to be properly hydrated. So we thought it'd be a fun way to do a little bit more of a deep dive into our relationship with element. So we've learned a lot about how their mixture of electrolytes helps you hydrate properly, replace both the salts and the water.

• 1:27:11Wes Larson?

  So in honor of staying properly hydrated, I want to hear a story from each of you about a time when you felt super dehydrated. And Mike, I know that new Stellar Blade game just came out, so you're probably pretty dehydrated right now. I thirst profoundly.

• 1:27:29Wes Larson?

  No, but it a time in your life where you got super dehydrated.

• 1:27:33Mike Smith?

  I oh, man, this was the easiest story. I I got pretty badly dehydrated to the point of being ill. When I was in high school, there was a youth summer soccer camp being held on our um just on our fields behind the school. And I had to dress up in our little our mascot was the devil. It was like a baby devil that wore a diaper.

• 1:27:53Wes Larson?

  Nice.

• 1:27:53Mike Smith?

  It was the hottest costume and immediately upon putting putting it on my sweat just exploded from every pore in my body. It was like immediately dehydrated.

• 1:28:03Wes Larson?

  Like Ian's fingertips.

• 1:28:04Jeff Larson?

  Those costumes are hot.

• 1:28:06Mike Smith?

  It's insane. I don't know if you guys.

• 1:28:08Jeff Larson?

  Color run. And I was the Easter bunny and it's hot.

• 1:28:13Wes Larson?

  Yeah, we have the best picture of Jeff running in front of like 200 people in an Easter bunny costume. We'll have to put that on the post for this episode.

• 1:28:22Mike Smith?

  But I went behind the shack and had to like take the head off and lay down like every 10 minutes because I just was so disoriented and thirsty.

• 1:28:30Wes Larson?

  Some element would have hit, dude.

• 1:28:32Mike Smith?

  I know. It really would have.

• 1:28:34Wes Larson?

  Jeff, what's yours?

• 1:28:35Jeff Larson?

  Just with someone with like pretty severe ADHD, I'm very bad at remembering the basics, like drinking and eating. So my first time ever at Death Valley, um, I just didn't have water and went out.

• 1:28:52Wes Larson?

  It's called Death Valley.

• 1:28:53Jeff Larson?

  I know. It's like the hottest is like 125 degrees or something. And we saw some sand dunes and like walked pretty far out on them until I felt like super thirsty. But then it's like you have to walk all the way back still. And that's when I was like, oh, I've probably have gotten far enough. And I got really, I know like that happens a ton out there, too.

• 1:29:17Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:18Jeff Larson?

  And then I got back to the car and still didn't have water. I had to like drive to a store somewhere.

• 1:29:24Wes Larson?

  Oh, geez.

• 1:29:26Wes Larson?

  I loved you going in, yeah, to a place titled Death Valley with no water. Could have been titled dehydration canyon or something.

• 1:29:34Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, give you some element.

• 1:29:37Wes Larson?

  We, so me and Jeff have done a lot of backpacking with my dad. And he is classic, like, he'll just say, there's for sure going to be water along our hike. So often we've only brought like purifiers, thinking for sure we're going to cross these little streams and be able to fill our water bottles.

• 1:29:58Jeff Larson?

  Like delicious Montana, like glacier water.

• 1:30:01Wes Larson?

  Yeah, and he's especially for me and my experience has been really bad about it in this mountain range nearest called the Mission Mountain Range. So I was on, I don't know, probably like a 15 mile hike with him once. And I brought a full bottle of water, but drank it all in the first five miles of the hike, thinking, oh, my dad told me we're going to cross all these wonderful streams. And we did not hit water until we got to the lake we were hiking to. And I was so dehydrated, it was like 90 degrees, really exposed hike. And I would have killed for water. I was so thirsty to the point where like, I was starting to hallucinate water sources. So I know Jeff's been super dehydrated with Indy for two.

• 1:30:46Jeff Larson?

  I remember one time we like crossed a stream and we were all pretty much out of water. But the stream was like out of the lake. So it was like, oh, we don't want lake water. Let's like keep going until we get like some ice water.

• 1:31:01Wes Larson?

  I don't listen to him anymore. I, yeah, I always bring extra water and I take it from whatever sources.

• 1:31:06Jeff Larson?

  He's a camel.

• 1:31:07Wes Larson?

  He is. Yeah. Um, all right. So.

• 1:31:11Wes Larson?

  Not, yeah, he's not actually a camel, but um, we do love him. Our next category is what element flavor would you say best represents each other's personality? So.

• 1:31:23Jeff Larson?

  Is that suggesting you would only love him as a camel? You think people think you would only love him if he is a camel? When you said, we do love him still?

• 1:31:32Mike Smith?

  It's kind of what you.

• 1:31:33Wes Larson?

  Oh, because I said, he's not a camel, but we do love him.

• 1:31:36Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:37Mike Smith?

  Yeah, that's a good point.

• 1:31:38Wes Larson?

  I think I'd love him less if he was a camel. So I don't know why I said it like that, but I'm glad you picked that out. Yeah.

• 1:31:45Jeff Larson?

  Sorry. I just wanted to make sure.

• 1:31:48Mike Smith?

  What if he was like Joe Cool, though?

• 1:31:50Wes Larson?

  He'd probably be smoking a lot of cigarettes. I don't know if I'd love him more.

• 1:31:53Mike Smith?

  But you'd still love him even if he smoked?

• 1:31:56Wes Larson?

  Yeah, I'm just getting confused how I feel about all of this now.

• 1:31:59Mike Smith?

  Okay.

• 1:31:59Wes Larson?

  But yeah.

• 1:32:00Mike Smith?

  Probably cut that part out. This is for element. We're we're repping element right now.

• 1:32:04Wes Larson?

  All right. So the next category is what element flavor would you say best represents the other's personality? So each of us is going to pick for the other two, which element flavor you think best represents them. You know, I'll give you guys an example of how this is going to look. I'll go ahead and go first.

• 1:32:21Mike Smith?

  Wesley goes first, Larson.

• 1:32:23Wes Larson?

  Going first all the time. I love hearing my own voice. Mike, I picked watermelon for you.

• 1:32:30Mike Smith?

  My man.

• 1:32:31Wes Larson?

  Because I know you love it and I think it's one of the flavors that starts the most sour, but turns the sweetest. And I think you are a person that people often think is very sour, but when you get to know you, you're very sweet. You're a very sweet, nice person.

• 1:32:48Mike Smith?

  Give me a lick. You'll see.

• 1:32:50Wes Larson?

  And watermelon is the sweetest. And then Jeff, I picked grapefruit for you because I traditionally like, I like, that's not the flavor that I would think would be my favorite, but I have just like grown to love it so much. I think it probably is my current favorite flavor and it, I think it's like one of the more interesting flavors in the element repertoire. And I think you of the three of us are the most interesting. So that's why I picked it for you. Yeah.

• 1:33:20Jeff Larson?

  Well, thanks.

• 1:33:21Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:21Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, I picked lemon for Mike because I think he's

• 1:33:25Wes Larson?

  Lemonade.

• 1:33:26Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, sour and he stays sour even when you get to know him really well.

• 1:33:30Mike Smith?

  I agree more with Jeff on this.

• 1:33:32Wes Larson?

  I will say I love the new lemonade flavor.

• 1:33:35Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:36Wes Larson?

  That's sort of been drinking exclusively lately.

• 1:33:38Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, sorry, I should say lemonade. Uh, and but like lemon desserts, kind like lemon Starburst, my favorite Starburst lemon desserts. I'm a big fan of lemon desserts, so like,

• 1:33:50Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:50Jeff Larson?

  You know, maybe I just like sour and I like watermelon for him though, because I think that's the fruitiest flavor and he's pretty fruity.

• 1:33:59Mike Smith?

  That's true.

• 1:34:00Jeff Larson?

  Um, and then

• 1:34:01Mike Smith?

  Of the three of us, I for sure am.

• 1:34:03Jeff Larson?

  Uh, I picked raspberry because raspberries are kind of small, but really good at what they do.

• 1:34:10Wes Larson?

  I'd be in raspberries.

• 1:34:12Mike Smith?

  I actually picked raspberry for Wes too. I, I feel like there, it's a flavor I'm excited to drink on any occasion, even if it, if I'm not like dehydrated or hot. It's just like a drink that I like to have around, you know? And it's a little bit sour, but it's like the perfect level of sweetness. It's like that good balance of everything, you know?

• 1:34:31Jeff Larson?

  It always goes first.

• 1:34:33Mike Smith?

  Yeah, it always, it's the first one.

• 1:34:35Wes Larson?

  Super into itself.

• 1:34:38Mike Smith?

  Right?

• 1:34:38Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:39Mike Smith?

  For Jeff, I actually a little bit of reciprocation here. I picked the lemonade flavor, uh, but more because I feel like it's just like a really bright, not just the yellow color, but like it's bright and refreshing. And it just feels kind of like when you need a little pick me up, lemonade is the go to drink, like on a hot summer day. It's exactly what you want, exactly what you need. It gives you everything you could ever want.

• 1:34:59Wes Larson?

  That's a lot better than my answer. All right. Good job, Ling. All right. So Jeff, this is a surprise category. I didn't want you to know about. I want you to explain what an electrolyte is. Just, I want you to tell us what you think one might be.

• 1:35:16Jeff Larson?

  Just one electrolyte?

• 1:35:17Wes Larson?

  What like definition of an electrolyte? Cause I couldn't, there's no way I could say it. So I want to hear.

• 1:35:23Jeff Larson?

  Don't pickles have it like pickle juice and stuff?

• 1:35:26Wes Larson?

  Rough to start. Yeah.

• 1:35:27Mike Smith?

  My track coach used to make me drink pickle juice.

• 1:35:30Jeff Larson?

  I mean, it makes sense though, like water is good for you, but if you add some other stuff to it can be better even.

• 1:35:38Wes Larson?

  Yeah. Great definition so far. Okay.

• 1:35:41Jeff Larson?

  But sometimes you can make it worse.

• 1:35:44Wes Larson?

  Honestly, probably right on track what I would have said. I always, I feel like we say electrolytes a lot and I have a hard time conceptualizing what they actually are. I know salts give us electrolytes. I know they're really good for us, like being less dehydrated and replenishing. But Mike, could you let us know what an electrolyte actually is?

• 1:36:04Mike Smith?

  Yeah, they're little particles and minerals that are found in your body fluids like blood and sweat. They have an electric charge and basically what they do is they help improve muscle and nerve functionality. Pretty much edits. That's a pretty simplified version of.

• 1:36:19Jeff Larson?

  So is it like electric light?

• 1:36:22Mike Smith?

  Yeah, kinda. I mean, there's some electricity, electrical charges, positive and negative. Shocking you, shocking your nerves a little bit, getting it going. I don't know. I'm, I'm getting into pseudoscience now.

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• 1:37:04Wes Larson?

  Uh, well, just to wrap up these element categories. I like outside of kind of the copy they always give us and the stuff that we say for them. I am addicted to element. I drink it all the time. It's pretty much what I drink exclusively at this point. Jesse too, we get so excited when we get our monthly shipment because our stockpile of element is just growing. By the day. I love sharing it with people on our trips. I love partnering with them. Like I truly just get happy to drink it all of the time. So we're really excited about Element. Is there anything you guys want to say?

• 1:37:37Jeff Larson?

  On our trips, I feel like we've all learned to bring a bunch now because like we used to just give everyone one pack and they're always like, can I have more? Uh, so now we all have like a bunch of Element each time we go.

• 1:37:51Mike Smith?

  I feel like it really has kind of saved my bacon a few different times, like in India or in the Galapagos. I can think of a couple of different days where I was really, really happy that I, because I sweat a lot. I'm kind of abnormally sweaty and it's just nice to know that I'm replacing all those electrolytes, you know?

• 1:38:10Wes Larson?

  Yeah. And if you're trying it for the first time, that first sip is really salty, but then it really gets a lot better after that.

• 1:38:16Mike Smith?

  Oh, it's so tasty.

• 1:38:16Wes Larson?

  Just so you know. Alright, so you can get a free eight count sample pack of Elements most popular drink mixed flavors with any purchase at drinkelement.com/tooth. You can find your favorite Element flavor or share with a friend. You try it totally risk free. If you don't like it, you can give it away to a friend and they'll give you your money back, no questions asked. They have a very low return rate and a high reorder rate though. So again, that's drinkelement.com/tooth to get a free eight count sample pack with any purchase. Drink L M N T dot com slash tooth. Okay. Quick conservation corner. Uh, as far as I know, bark scorpions are doing great. They have plenty of habitat.

• 1:39:00Wes Larson?

  They do pretty well existing on the fringes of human society. If you live in a place where you have scorpions around and you're worried about them, you can go out with a black light because they fluoresce bright green under a black light. That's a good way to find them and safely and gently remove them from your property and maybe release them out somewhere in better desert habitat.

• 1:39:20Jeff Larson?

  Sounds like a big threat to them might be sandals.

• 1:39:23Wes Larson?

  Sandals. Yeah. Flip flop is a good way to, uh, yeah, it's a good threat. Alright. Finally, let's do our claw rating. Actually, we should do ouchies too. Let's do ouchies for both Abby and Ian.

• 1:39:35Mike Smith?

  Forgot about ouchies.

• 1:39:36Jeff Larson?

  And the Coyote Peterson guy.

• 1:39:39Wes Larson?

  Yeah, he gave it 10 out of 10.

• 1:39:40Mike Smith?

  9.8 for that.

• 1:39:41Wes Larson?

  We don't have to do it.

• 1:39:42Jeff Larson?

  I'm gonna readjust his, I think.

• 1:39:44Wes Larson?

  I'm gonna do, for Abby, I'm gonna do an 8. I think she talked more about the systemic stuff than the actual pain, but she definitely was like feeling a ton of pain. Ian, I'm gonna do an 8 as well. Ian said that it was super painful, but they're not, there's no, actually, you know, I'm gonna do 7s for both of them because there's no lasting effects. So I don't think we can give it an 8. So for me, I'm doing 7s.

• 1:40:10Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, I'm going 5s for every, across the board. Intimidation, I'm gonna go like a 3. Because I think a grizzly bear is a lot more intimidating than a scorpion and a shark. And I'd much rather get stung by a scorpion than a grizzly bear or shark. So, you know what? It does sound like in the moment, though, it seems like there's just like a hot coal going through your body, which would be unbearably painful, except for at least it goes away.

• 1:40:41Wes Larson?

  Not very chill.

• 1:40:42Mike Smith?

  I think I'm gonna go with 6. I know through a whole night of kind of thinking and considering, considering maybe you're dying is a pretty big mental burden to bear. But yeah, in the grand scheme of attacks that we've talked about, this one's not super high on my list.

• 1:40:59Wes Larson?

  And then let's give them our claw rating or our pincer rating, if you will.

• 1:41:05Mike Smith?

  I will.

• 1:41:07Wes Larson?

  What do you guys think? How many claws for?

• 1:41:09Mike Smith?

  I like scorpions. I always have loved scorpions.

• 1:41:12Wes Larson?

  Arizona bark scorpion.

• 1:41:13Mike Smith?

  Great. I'm going 100 out of 10. I love these guys. Top one animal of all time.

• 1:41:20Jeff Larson?

  What are those huge black ones called?

• 1:41:22Wes Larson?

  Emperor scorpion.

• 1:41:24Jeff Larson?

  Those are my favorite scorpions.

• 1:41:26Wes Larson?

  Okay.

• 1:41:27Jeff Larson?

  Uh, so I think with these, I'll probably give them like a six, but I do really like scorpions. They're pretty sweet.

• 1:41:34Wes Larson?

  Yeah, I think I'll do like a seven. I think for um invertebrates, they're pretty high for me. But I, I don't like spend a lot of time thinking about scorpions or really am that specifically interested in them. They do. I think they give me the willies like a tiny bit too. You know, I, not many animals do, but scorpions kind of have that look that do kind of give me a little bit of the willies.

• 1:41:58Jeff Larson?

  I think if everything, like every animal on earth was the exact same size, they might be the scariest animal too.

• 1:42:07Wes Larson?

  Oh, that's a good point. This would be like a, a good one for the everything's 200 pounds.

• 1:42:12Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, like I would be terrified of a scorpion if it was my size.

• 1:42:16Wes Larson?

  Yeah, that's what happened in Clash of the Titans.

• 1:42:19Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, that guy's pretty scary, right?

• 1:42:22Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:22Jeff Larson?

  Or like Dwayne Johnson as a scorpion, like our scariest human and he's half scorpion.

• 1:42:29Wes Larson?

  Do you think he's the scariest human?

• 1:42:32Jeff Larson?

  Dude, his, his elbow drop.

• 1:42:35Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:35Mike Smith?

  People's elbow?

• 1:42:36Jeff Larson?

  People's elbow? Are you kidding me, Wes?

• 1:42:39Wes Larson?

  Yeah, all right. I'm sorry. I'm, I retract my statement. All right. Well, that's it. As always, if you guys are interested in more content, please check out our Patreon or our Apple Griz Club. I know Mike and Jeff just recorded a totally unhinged um Attacks at High Altitudes episode that just from the comments I can tell really went off the rails, but people really liked it. So there's some really fun episodes on there. You're going to get access to honestly like double the content that you already have access to and a really fun community. So check it out. We're going to continue posting on there. It's really fun. Anyway, that's 10 bucks a month. So sign up if you want it.

• 1:43:19Jeff Larson?

  Mike's gonna listen to Ian's interview.

• 1:43:21Mike Smith?

  Yeah, zero chance. Sorry, Ian. You're a lovely guy, I'm sure. I wouldn't know.

• 1:43:26Wes Larson?

  Well, thank you to the podcast Out Alive. Check out Out Alive if you want some more great stories. Thank you, Ian, for being on the episode and thank you, Mike and Jeff for being my best friends. And I sure love you and we'll talk to you later.

• 1:43:40Jeff Larson?

  Sure thing.

• 1:43:42Wes Larson?

  See ya. Bye.