Grizzly Bear Attack - Bram and the Brown Bear

Hello everyone, welcome to Tooth and Claw podcast. We are a podcast primarily about animals and animal encounters, animal attacks. We have a wildlife biologist who emphasized and bears, and his name is Wes Larson. A little uncertainty there. We weren't positive if he graduated or not. Emphasized is where I had some uncertainty. Not sure if he's a wild life, technically a wild life biologist. I've shown you my degree. That one's been put to bed. AI. Forged. We had Tom on the podcast, my mentor. It's not like he was like, who the hell are you? Deep fake. Sure. Yeah, you can't really believe anything these days. I guess there can be a shred of doubt out there still. Exactly. Yeah. My name is Jeff Larson. I'm Wes's younger brother. I'm also almost a wildlife biologist. Then we have- Deep fake. I almost am. No, but that's okay. Then we have Mike Smith, who claims to like dogs, but if you press him on it, the only dog he's ever liked is his family's dog. Yeah. His late family dog. All my family's dogs I've liked. Everyone else's dogs. Yeah, get out of here with that. I kind of agree with the dog thing, Mike. There's plenty of people's dogs that I like, but they always get annoying to me pretty quickly. I think you just grow to understand your own dog and like your own dog. See, now that I have a dog, I'm just saying hi to every dog I see. I think it makes you appreciate dogs more, but I also- now, when I picture having any other dog, but my dog, it feels annoying to me. That's probably because it shanks. No, I like shanks. But shanks is a lot. He barked at every single semi on the way to Montana with Mike, so I don't blame Mike too much about shanks. Have you heard from my lawyer yet, Jeff? Wait. Hearing loss. I have- I bit my hand real hard. A question for you guys though. I want to know if I peed my pants and if possibly Bill peed his pants or not. When? When I just went to New Mexico, I traveled around with my favorite business partner, Danielle, from National Park After Dark. Making deals. Yeah. We were just doing business. But on the way there, I stopped at a Navajo casino and gambled a little. Of course. And I would go up, go down, go up, go down, and then I end up winning a couple hundred bucks. I'm feeling really happy. And I'm like, you know what? I got two more hours on the road. I'm going to go to the bathroom. Number two. Right? Wow. Yeah. So I go and I flush and everything seems fine. I pull my pants up and my entire left butt down to like my left ankle is soaking wet. And I'm so confused because I'm like looking at the floor. I'm looking at the toilet. I'm like, where did all this water come from? I start rubbing it and smelling it and I can't smell anything. So then I'm just confused. And I call our producer Bill and I tell him about it and he's like, yeah, that's happened to me before too. And I don't know what it is. I think just floors wet. And then I call our cousin Brent and he's like, yeah, that's happened to me too. Every once in a while, I'll pee through the tiny crack between the seat and the bowl while I'm like pooping at a public toilet. How did you not notice that? So then I'm like, that has to be what happened. I must have just peed through that tiny crack. And I'm just going to say that's what Bill did too. Huh. Maybe your water broke. So does that count as peeing my pants? If I peed on my pants and then put them on? Oh yeah. I don't think so. I don't think so actually. I think you're safe. Because you made it to the toilet. You did everything you could. It's not your fault your penis is so small it points out that way. I was happy for like a total of 20 minutes. That's great. Yeah, sorry about that. That has yet to happen to me. I think I would have thought that my pants had gotten in something on the floor if that happened. This piece of paint. Yeah. Are they still covered in it? Have you washed them? I don't know. All right. I think I've had that happen before in the crack between the seat and the bowl. No, but I instantly was like, oh shit, and readjusted. It wasn't like I peed my whole pee and then was like, oh man, how did that happen? Well I did the same thing except where I said, oh shit, because I was pooping. Okay. It's never happened to me before. Yeah. Yeah, we don't all have hogs. Big hog over here. Yes. I've been, what's it, jelking? That works. All right. I got a quick correction corner. Blessers, let us know if I peed my pants or not. Yeah. If that happened to you, please send this story. And yeah, let us know in the comments, did Jeff pee his pants or not? All right. Quick correction corner. On the Brown Recluse episode, I've failed to mention that they also live in Missouri. A few people called that out. Missouri. That was Missouri. I forgot to say that. So they do definitely live in Missouri. You know guys, there's a lot of facts that go into these episodes and every once in a while, we're just going to miss something or mess something up, but we try to do our best. None of us are professionals. I am. I am a professional wildlife biologist, but I'm not a Brown Recluse expert, that's for sure. So there's been a lot about grizzlies in the news lately. Next week we're going to talk about some of these recent attacks that happened in the last few weeks. We're going to go over some of the fallout from those attacks, which has been unfortunate. But in the meantime, I wanted to do a grizzly story as a primer, just in case you guys forgot what a grizzly is. So today we're going to go over a story that I'd never heard of before I started looking for a good story. And I kept thinking about it after I heard the basic details. So I decided to save the one that I was kind of circling for another episode and tell this one today. And a big part of that reason why I was thinking about this one so much is it really reminded me of the bear attack scene from the Revenant and not necessarily the true life bear attack on Hugh Glass, but the Revenant movie attack. The Decaprio one. The Decaprio one, yeah. The good one. The other one's bad. It's just more boring, I feel like. One of the questions I get asked the most as a bear biologist is whether or not that scene was accurate, like whether or not it was a good bear attack scene. And after we go through this episode, you're going to see that it actually is a pretty accurate scene in a movie as far as bear attacks are concerned. All right. All right. The main source I had for this one was actually a TV program called I Shouldn't Be Alive. That's not how I first found it. I found some online articles, a few other things, but that was the one that had the most kind of filled in narrative. So I used it quite a bit. I feel that way sometimes. You feel like you should be a live subject of an episode? Yeah. Just a really sad episode. I've got to watch that. Today I felt like maybe I was going to be on that episode because I was at the rec center and a stranger asked me for a ride. And there was a brief moment where I was like, I don't know. This is where things happen. I did. I gave him a ride down to the train station. It's like, I was riding trains too. He's riding trains. He could be anyone from anywhere kind of thing. And then I kind of weighed the possibility of maybe no longer being alive. And I was like, yeah, it doesn't sound that bad. Yeah. I mean, I was thinking about that this week too. I've done a little bit of everything. I'm ready. You know, it's not like I want to go, but it's yeah, we don't need to get into this. But this story takes place in a place called Horseshoe Mountain. It's a tall mountain that is found just west of Cook City, Montana and just north of Yellowstone National Park. And our faithful listeners will probably know the name Cook City because we did the Soda Butte campsite bear attack about that attack. And then also I took that video of that grizzly chasing the moose in Cook City. So it's a really interesting place. Our more astute listeners will know horseshoes from Lucky Charms too. Yeah, exactly. And the horseshoe never leaves. That one's always in there. It's a constant, a mainstay. Yeah. And they'll know soda too. Sometimes when I eat Lucky Charms, I try to eat all the oats first and the horseshoe really is like the sleeper oat. That's a hard one to not eat when you're trying to just eat oats. Oh, really? You think it blends in a little too well? It blends in, it looks like an oat. Yeah. All right. Well, there's a reason this mountain is called Horseshoe Mountain. It wraps around a lake in the shape of a horseshoe and there's a wide bowl beneath this mountain with some big expanses of meadow. And it's a great place to find a lot of the wildlife that calls the greater Yellowstone ecosystem home. So you can find black and grizzly bears there. You can find mountain lions, bobcat, lynx, wolverine, wolves, bighorn sheep, mountain goats, deer, moose and elk. So it's pretty much squirrels. Yeah, red squirrel are there. There's actually a flying squirrel that you can find there. It's pretty much a fully intact ecosystem with all the critters that have existed there for millennia, just not in the numbers that we would have found them even 50 years ago, but they're all there still. We haven't extirpated any of them yet. So in September of 1995, Bram S. Mike? Bram S? The composer? No, Bram Schaefer is the name of our person. He's with his father, Dennis, his brother and some family friends and they're on Horseshoe Mountain and they're looking for one of those animals I listed specifically. They were out hunting elk. It was the last day of muzzle loader season. And while they had been hunting for about a week, so far, none of them had shot a single elk. Sounds like a Larson hunting trip. Um, is muzzle loading? Is that just hunting season? No, so muzzle loaders are we're going to go into it a little bit more, but it's a gun that you like put black powder into and then put a cartridge in. And then like it's a one shot gun. So it's trickier, but they're very high caliber usually. And you just have to be much pickier about your shot. You get like a longer hunting season with them. There's a, there's a specific season just for muzzle loaders and it's usually kind of concurrent with archery season. And the difference too is with muzzle loading, you're allowed to like call the animals in, you're allowed to use calls and whatnot, kind of like archery. Oh, weird. That's weird to consider that there's different rules of engagement when it's kind of fair chase is what that's considered because with a high powered rifle with the scope, it's not fair to be able to call them in too, because you're never going to miss and you're going to have multiple shots. What if you're using like a cannon? Then I bet you could probably, you probably could call them in. Use every tool at your disposal to make it a little easier. This is kind of like a small cannon. You can't use an elk call if you're using a cannon. I don't think it'd be pretty hard to kill an elk with a cannon. I'd be shocked. I think so, right? Like by the time you light the thing, it's going to know you're there. Yeah. And you have to like crank it to like, aim it up and down and stuff. Yeah. Yeah, I guess. I guess if there's like a herd like they normally do in shows, you can just lobby balls out into it. You don't really have to worry about like which part you hit. So yeah, like you don't need a headshot. All right. Well, for Bram, this hunting trip was a special one. He was 18. He had recently graduated high school and he was preparing to take the next steps in his life. For all he knew, those steps might take him far away from Montana. And both he and his dad Dennis felt like this might be like a one last hunt kind of thing before Bram entered adulthood in a new era in his life. And you guys are both fans of action movies, right? Oh, yeah. Yes. So if there's ever a character on an action movie that says something like, oh, this is the last day on the job before retirement, death leg, or like we're going to go on one last trip or whatever, what always happens to them. Bad stuff. It's not good. I'm actually going to share my screen here really quick and play one of my all time favorite tricks me too. I'm always like, ah, this guy's not going to be in the move. He's going to go retire. That's nice. This is one of my favorite clips from the Simpsons ever. Hey, McBain, you keep eating them hotlings. She never going to make it to a pension. Come on, live a little story. Oh, thank you. Got me a future partner two days away from retirement. My daughter's graduating from college. Little Susie's going up. And as soon as we nail Mendoza, my old lady and I are going to sail around the world like we always wanted. We just christened the book. Oh, yes, sir. Everything's going to be just. All right. Anyway, it's kind of that that tired old thing of like it's your one last day or whatever, something really bad is going to happen. And in this story, it actually does. Something that I've really been noticing in my life is that it has gotten a lot easier to spend money without really even realizing it. My phone just automatically fills in all my credit card information. It's just very simple to sign up for things and spend money. And for me, it's led to some overspending and some categories where I really didn't need to spend any extra money. And that's why I really like Rocket Money. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that can give you a really clear picture of your financials, how you're spending your money, your subscriptions, and a lot of other things. They have just a single dashboard that just lets you see your checking, your savings, your loans, your investments, and you can set budgets and goals. You can get personalized insights and regular reports. And you can even receive real time alerts for large transactions, upcoming bills, refunds, and low balances. You guys know that I have a tendency to get scammed sometimes. And it's really important to me that I have someone else monitoring my spending. Unexpected transactions. And that's why I just absolutely love Rocket Money. Anytime there's an expense that maybe was unpredicted or higher than normal, Rocket Money lets me know. So Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps you find and cancel unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending, and helps lower your bills so you can grow your savings. Let Rocket Money help you reach your financial goals faster. Join at rocketmoney.com slash claw. That's rocketmoney.com slash claw. Rocketmoney.com slash claw. So Bram is from a little place called Brodus, Montana. It's a tiny little town. A tiny little town out in eastern Montana. And they, you know, had made this unforgivable mistake of taunting the universe by saying one last trip. And unfortunately it's not going to end well. All right. So we talked a little bit about muzzle loaders, but basically any gun that you load from the muzzle and you use black powder is going to be a muzzle loader. And modern muzzle loaders are often much more dependable, quicker to load, more accurate, higher caliber, and use different bullets than like traditional muzzle loaders. So I think when people picture a muzzle loader, they think of like, you know, the revolutionary war. Yeah, exactly. Where you're like, you know, cramming this ball and it takes forever and you have a little pouch of powder and it is still similar to that, but the technology has come a ways to where it's still muzzle loading, but it is quicker and more accurate than it used to be. Okay. So while the hunting really isn't going well for this group, it's still something that his family loves doing together. Regardless of the outcome, it's a time to bond, to have fun, to leave a lot of the cares of the world behind. And because a lot of these more modern worries get left in the home, the men also had to take on some much more primal worries. And Bram, who again was born out in Brodus, it's hundreds of miles from the nearest grizzly bear. It's only really on these hunting trips to the greater Yellowstone ecosystem that him and his family really had to start thinking about bear safety. And they're definitely thinking about it on this day in September of 1995, because they know they're in some of the best grizzly bear habitat in the lower 48 and they're hunting during a time of the year that's especially risky. So a little bit of this is going to be repetitive from other episodes, but we've talked a lot about grizzly bears and grizzly bear biology. But one thing that I think a lot of people still don't get about grizzly bears is just how adaptable they are when it comes to food. I think there's this common perception when you talk about brown bears or grizzly bears that the main thing they eat is fish and berries. Like people just kind of tend to think, you know, that's what they're eating. And there are places. About honey. Yeah, they forget about honey, exactly. But depending on where you find a bear, especially these interior grizzlies, like the ones we have in Montana, they're not going to have these amazingly dependable salmon runs right before dining season. So they sometimes have to rely on harder to find and less predictable sources of food, and they really do ramp it up in the fall when they're packing on weight for dining. Do you guys remember what that period is called when they're trying to put on as much weight as possible? Hyperphasia. Hyperphasia. Oh man. Jeff. That's a point for Jeff, right? It is. Yeah. He's winning. Yeah. Hyperphasia. Throughout the year in the greater Yellowstone, grizzly bears are going to be taking advantage of a bunch of these different food sources, but especially in the fall, they're going to be packing on as many calories as possible. So kind of how, like some of their major boons in the Yellowstone ecosystem are right when they come out of hibernation in the early spring, late winter, often one of the first things they'll go for are winter killed carcasses. So like bison or elk or anything that may have died over the winter, the bears will go to those carcasses and start eating them. Next, they're going to turn to like grasses, roots, other vegetation that's coming up in the early spring. That, that grass, when it first starts growing, the tips of it are like so high in nutrients that bears are really looking for like early growth grass. Then later in the spring, they're going to be looking for elk calves. Then as it gets longer and longer, berries, grasses, roots, forbs, other vegetation in the summer, maybe army cutworm moths and whitebark pine nuts in the late summer and then in the fall, just absolutely whatever they can find. So they kind of turn into child predators in a sense. They're looking for the little. Because they're killing elk calves. Yeah. Yeah. That's. They're really good at catching them too. They eat a lot of elk calves in Yellowstone. It's tough. Yeah. But you could say that, I guess. But fall is really like fourth quarter where they have to run the score up as much as possible before entering the den. That's the sports analogy. So you guys can finally understand what I'm talking about. Sportsmanship. The Elks are probably complaining to the Rangers like, come on. Eating it. They don't need to eat all that. Yeah. It's like, yeah. When a basketball player hits a layup, a wide open layup at the end of a game. Fighting. Gotta fight them. You gotta fight. Jeff, we've talked about this before, but when hunters are out hunting and they're successful, what's pretty much the first thing they do after shooting and killing an animal like an elk? Um, probably say, Hey, I think I got him. Yeah. Like the first action they do, what's the first task they have to do after they've killed an elk? Oh, uh, they got them. They got out their guts and intestines. So that the meat doesn't go bad. Yeah. They feel dress them. So basically they're taking out all of the internal organs of the elk, the guts. They're leaving it behind. And it's important because if you leave the guts and organs in the dead animal, like Jeff just said, it can spoil the meat. And it's a lot of extra weight that you don't want to be carrying when you're packing that animal out. So a bunch of piles of guts and organs all over the landscape is a pretty nice little bonus for grizzly bears. We've talked about this a bit before, but for grizzly bears, for ravens, for coyotes, for wolves, for anything that's going to try and survive a winter. This is a really nice bonus. So much so that research has shown that grizzly bears will actually travel to popular hunting areas in the fall because they know they're going to be able to find these gut piles. And sometimes that does put them into conflict with hunters themselves. Wow. Yeah. When I was working that job with 3.99, we kind of knew that she was going to go toward this one mountain because it's so popular for hunting and she would go there to get elk piles or elk gut piles in the past. And sure enough, that's where she went. And she was looking for gut piles. So there are bears that this is like part of their annual strategy now is eating these gut piles. So Bram and these other men had been hunting all week. They hadn't gone anything on their last day of hunting. They decided to hike up near the top of the mountain and then spread out in this wide line. Each of them would hunt alone while walking down to a predetermined location. So it's going to increase their chances of at least one of them getting into some elk. And Bram was really excited for the chance to kind of hunt alone for a little bit, be alone with the stots and his rifle. And as they split up, the men do notice. What you have to do with muskets too is form a line. Form a line. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What's that called? That type of warfare? Uh, bad. I can't remember. Yeah. Just like you don't want to be in front warfare. I think depending like if you were out hunting with like Dick Cheney, I'd also like those moments where I was alone. Yes, you are not an ice. I think they're getting blasted. He'd find a way to shoot you anyway. So Bram's actually like at the end of this line of men and he is up over a crest of a mountain, like a ridge. So he's out of sight of these other hunters. But right before they split up, they did notice that there are darkening clouds on the horizon that they, uh, there might be a big storm approaching. So it's just something, you know, that they notice as they're about to start hunting. So Bram enters a patch of dense brush and forest and he's now more than a few hundred yards away from the rest of these hunters. And he can no longer hear any voices or sounds of his family and friends. In fact, he isn't hearing anything. He's not hearing birds. He's not hearing insects. The forest feels completely and eerily quiet and still. And he remembers thinking that it was the kind of quiet that makes the hair stand up on the back of your neck, kind of like something is near or watching you. And I understand that feeling. I think we've all had that before. And we're right in this case, Bram was right to suspect that something scary was nearby, but just so everyone knows, if you're worried about grizzlies, the worst thing is if you hear a lot of birds, specifically one bird in particular. Uh, do you guys know what bird that is? Ravens. If you're walking through grizzly country and you hear a lot of Ravens is very likely there's something dead nearby. And then somewhat likely there's a grizzly bear nearby too. So Ravens are something you want to listen for if you're hiking grizzly country. And I'm not talking about like one or two calling. I mean, like a lot of them in one spot. Why is that? Cause they're scavengers. So they'll go down on the carcass and then when the bear is on the carcass, the Ravens will go up into the trees and nearby and wait their turn. And they're often calling a lot and like pretty agitated because they want to continue feeding, but they can't because the bears on the carcass. So, um, that's the thing that spooks me out the most is if I'm hiking alone and there's suddenly a bunch of Ravens around, I'm going to go a different direction, like I would not keep going that direction. Okay. So you're saying since there's no bird, he can assume he's safe. I'm not saying that because he's not. Um, but I'm saying that stillness isn't usually, uh, a good sign that there's something else out there. Like often when there is a big predator, a lot of the other animals are going to be making some sort of call of like a warning call to let you know there's something there. And it's not to let you know, but it's to let other members of their species know generally. You know, I don't, I shouldn't say that. I don't know why they do it, but they'll do a warning call. I shouldn't say like the reasons they're doing it because I'm not exactly sure. No, I remember when we were in India at the tiger, we were looking for tigers. That's what they use the sound cues from other animals to track where the tigers were at in the park, which I thought was really a cool kind of tracking tactic. And that happens in our forest too. Like a red squirrel that's just chittering away really loud. Like if you walk through the forest, you'll notice squirrels doing that to you. They'll do it to bears and other predators too. That's, that's something you pay attention to. But for bram, there were no sounds as he steps into the small clearing and walks right in between a female grizzly feeding on an elk carcass and her cub on the other side of the clearing. Shoot. So this is really where the Ravens at. What the heck? I know I needed some Ravens. I'm confused. This is really up there when it comes to bad situations with grizzly bears. Cub defense and carcass defense are two of the leading factors when it comes to attacks and bram is between a bear and her cub while she's feeding on a carcass. So it's a really, really bad situation. Yeah. It's one where you would expect the bear to charge rather than run away. And sure enough, this bear charges it bram. So he yells at the bear in the hopes that maybe the noise would cause her to break off her charge or maybe run by him. But this bear had made up her mind and she slams into bram, knocking him off his feet and onto the ground. She rips into his hunting vest and his clothing with her claws and then bites into the top of his head and her long canines are dragging across the bone of his skull and tearing his scalp partway free, which they love doing that. You know, we've, we've heard that before. These bears love scalping people. Imagine the sound a raven would be making if a bear was doing that to them. Probably the same sound that they make for just fatter. We ravens make some really cool sounds sometimes though, too. I like really like a. I wonder if that's where indigenous people learn to scalping. From bears. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, interesting. Yeah. They were very in tune with nature. Yeah, for sure. That's an interesting thought. Thanks. Yeah, you're welcome. So the initial ferocity of this tack is really intense. The bears biting into him. It's scratching him. He's on the ground. It's tearing up his down jackets, tearing up his vest. And then suddenly it stops and brams flat on his back and the bear pretty much puts her head on his stomach and starts huffing and snorting. So I don't fault Bram for what he did next because this is 1995. A lot of bear messaging was still being developed and really hadn't made its way into the public yet. But what was probably happening here is that this bear had felt like she had sufficiently neutralized this particular threat. And she's just making sure that he's no longer a threat. She's sniffing. She's huffing. And then as soon as she realizes listening for heartbeat. Yeah, she might be listening for our feet. We can't say we don't know. But that's probably what she was doing here was just, you know, trying to decide if she had neutralized him and had she decided she did, she'd probably gather her cub and leave. So in my opinion, that carcass. Yeah. I mean, if she thought he was a threat, I think she would probably just get out of there. Uh, in my opinion, and it's just that it's my opinion. I think had Bram decided to stay still a bit longer in this moment, there's a good chance that this encounter ends here. But that's not what he decided to do. Bram was really mad and his temper was about to get the better of him in a pretty severe way. So he pulls his arm back and he punches this bear in the nose and then he throws another punch with his other arm, the old one too. Yeah. And the bear catches that hand in her mouth and bites right through it. Do he screams? He decides he needs to change strategies and his mind goes to his gun. Um, he looks around and he realizes that this bear is actually sitting on top of his rifle. And when he tries to pull it out from under her, she bites into his legs and starts whipping him through the air like what? Truck. Like no, no, like a puppy with a sock or a dog with a doll. Yeah. Yeah. Um, it does, you know, I watched my dog whip a toy around the other day and it does kind of look like what bears do with something. A ribbon. A ribbon dancer. Andre 3000 with a Polaroid picture. Yeah, that was a good one. Yeah. Okay. Well, as this bear whipped him back and forth, the muscle and flesh tore from his right thigh and separated from the bone. Bram didn't feel any pain because adrenaline is coursing through his body. The bear throws him down and walks a short distance away and then watches Bram as he's lying still on the ground. Again, probably just waiting to see if there's going to be any movement or any more threat and Bram does move again. Uh, his gun is pretty close. So kind of like in the revenant, he slowly stretches out his arm to grab his rifle, aims it at this bear and she charges in again. But yeah, that is very much like the revenant. Yeah. Where just every time he moves, she comes back in. Um, but the difference here is that Bram fired and in a combo of probably what was both skill and luck, he drops this bear with a single shot. Wow. Kills her dad in her tracks. Yeah. And the wind starts to blow and now it's starting to rain pretty hard. So a mile and a half away, Bram's dad, Dennis and his brother are just getting back to camp and they immediately noticed that Bram is in there. Dennis starts asking around, no one's seen Bram and he knows that something is wrong or that maybe Bram had gotten an elk. Um, they talk about like Bram's a cowboy. They talk about how tough and like physically fit he was. So for him not to be there, it's either a really good thing or a really bad thing. Um, but they don't remember hearing any rifle shots. Apparently they didn't hear his shot as he killed the bear. So they don't think that he'd gotten an elk and Dennis is getting really worried. So he and his other son and some of their friends decide to head back up onto the mountain in this cold driving rain and storm. There's lightning. It's like a whole big storm. Think of how fit that bear must have been to catch his punch if he's a fit cowboy. Yeah. She didn't catch that bullet very well though. It seems like she did. Caught it a little too well, maybe. Maybe she thought they were playing fetch. That's really sad. I can't joke about this, but, uh, all right. So back up on the mountain, Bram's serving the damage that this bear had done to him. His face is covered in blood from his scalp that had been torn partially away. And there's also feathers in all of this blood and wounds and whatnot from his down jacket. So he kind of looks like he's been tarred and feathered, but the tar is blood. Yeah. Think about that, Mike. The tar is blood. That is metal. Yeah. Yeah. Pretty cool, right? Blood tar, that's a good metal name. Put that on the cover of your next album. Blood and feathered. Oh, blood and feathered. I like that. That's good. All right. So he knew he'd been bitten and torn up a bit, but he hadn't really discovered anything too major until he tried to stand up and finally saw his right thigh. It's going to be a little gross, everyone. So just be ready for it. The muscle and skin was hanging down like a big torn flap. And he could see all the way into the cavity where this muscle and skin had been. And he could see his femoral artery was exposed, luckily not torn, but exposed. And he could see it pulsing as the blood was pumping through it. He described the overall appearance of his leg looking like slabs of meat were hanging off of it. He really didn't like the look of his leg. So on the pouring rain, he pulls this flayed skin and meat back up and pushes it into the hole where it had been torn out of. What? And then he takes his hunter's orange vest and ties it around this wound to try and hold everything together. I mean, I guess that makes sense. It does. But like you wouldn't want to be walking back with like a bunch of like skin and meat dangling off of your leg. Yeah. But still, that's like, that's pretty tough. Like where'd you want him to put it? Little baggy, but he's feeling some pretty intense pain now. And again, he's a cowboy from Brody's. So he probably is a tough guy to be feeling like this amount of pain. You know, it's a lot. That's not nothing. It's not nothing. So he shoots three shots into the air, which is the universal sign among hunters that someone's in trouble and then he sits and waited. And I think, I think he must have had a pistol with him too. For him to shoot these three shots. One of the things I read hinted at him having a pistol. But to muzzle load, it would be funny. Yeah. It's like 45 minutes. They just keep listening for another one. But yeah, so he does these three shots. He sits and waits. He's yelling for help. But the wind and the rain of this storm are completely drowning out his cries and pretty much every noise that he can make. Meanwhile, his dad and his brother and these other hunters have been searching for a while. The storm is getting really bad. His dad wants to keep going, but the storm is so bad that some of the other people in this search party are saying, Hey, if we keep doing this, we're really putting ourselves at risk too. It's getting really cold. 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He's super mad and it's kind of helping him fight the pain. He said that it was like one of the key things in him not giving up was how angry he was about the situation he was in. I think that's so cool. Like not scared or sad, just angry. It's like a very cowboy thing. Yeah, it is. Like how the hell did this happen to me? Yeah. God, all day bear. Well, same exact time. But there were actually two other people on the mountain that day, actually more than that, but two others that we're going to talk about right now. Bruce Piseki and his son, Bryce, who are from Lakeside, Montana, had also been hunting on the last day of muzzleloader season on the mountain. And they had also gotten a little turned around in this storm. They'd been seeing tons of bear sign all day. So when I say sign, I mean like tracks, scat, scratches on trees. And they saw so much that they decided we can't keep going. We're going to call it and go back to camp. But as they're going back, the storm kicks up, they can't find the trail. And when they finally do find their trail, they're soaked, they're exhausted, and they sit down to take a quick break. These bear tracks and scat and everything are still really very much on their minds while they're taking this break. And Bruce is worried that their muzzleloaders are getting so wet in this storm that they might not work properly. So on a whim, they have to load black powder into them. Yeah. So on a whim, he tells his son like, Hey, let's try shooting one of our rifles to see if it'll work because we might be depending on these. If we do run into a bear. And so they do that. And the sound echoes through the storm, through the woods. And Bram just manages to hear it where he's lying a few hundred yards away. And he immediately fires his rifle in response. So Bryce shoot at. Yeah. And all that. Sure. Bruce and Bryce hear this other rifle shot. And then they could faintly hear Bram's voice yelling for help through the wind and the rain and the dark. And then they hear him say that he had been attacked by a bear. And as they really nervously approached the source of this voice, they're like very bear, you know, bear annoyed at this point. They finally get close enough to Bram. And he tells them immediately that the bear was dead and that he needed a lot of help. Shock is starting to set in for him. He's shaking uncontrollably. The colors leaving his face. These two men aren't like they're not doctors, but they do their best to survey his injuries. Bruce would later go on to say that a whole section of his thigh was folded down. They do some meager first aid, and then they realized they need to get him off the mountain and down to safety. So Bruce does the only thing he can think of. And he picks Bram up on his shoulder like a sack of potatoes and slowly does his best to work his way down the mountain while Bryce is carrying all their gear and their guns. And this isn't like this is an 18 year old like cowboy. You know, this is he's like a bigger kid. This isn't an easy thing for this man to do. And it's pouring rain too. So that would be like incredibly hard to carry someone on your shoulder. And if you slept like that guy has a big gaping injury that you're going to like make him scream. Yeah, you might get real. Bram, he's already so mad. You're going to make him leave the door. Don't make him mad. Punch him in the nose. Angry. Yeah, just look at the bear. So it's not easy and Bruce would make it a short distance than his strength would give out and he would set Bram down and then mentally force himself to get a second wind and keep going because he knew Bram was going to die. If they didn't get him warm soon. He said he could literally feel the life of the boy on his back ebbing out of him as they were making their way down the mountain. And it started getting to where he could only take him about 50 yards at a time before needing to take a break. But he refused to give up. He continued lifting Bram up onto his shoulders and trudging through the rain, the mud, the slippery vegetation. He drew his pistol to fire three shots in the air and then he set a prayer and he asked God for strength and he says that when he picked Bram back up, he felt stronger and more determined and he didn't feel tired anymore. Wow. Yeah. He credits God with that. Sure. Bram's now going in. Who do you think Sam gave credit to when he carried Frodo up the mountain? He's Gaffer, right? It's got to be his old Gaffer. Eru. They're high deity. Yeah, it's probably his old Gaffer. Yeah. So Bram's now going in and out. He's going in and out of consciousness. He is really fading, but they're still just trudging through the storm. They walk a ways further and when they look up, they see something that just makes them feel so much better. It's flashlights heading toward them in the rain. Some nearby hunters in another group had heard those last distress shots that Bruce had fired and when they heard the three shots in a row, they knew someone was in trouble and they decided to hike up the mountain in the rain to help. And one of those hunters, Andy Wolfe, was a medical doctor that had specialized training in shock trauma. No way. Yeah. So he immediately took stock of Bram's wounds and when he reached his hand into the cavity in his thigh, he could feel his pulsing femoral artery and he immediately had the thought that Bram was either going to die there on the mountain or he was going to lose his leg. He was sure one of those two things was going to happen. But they get him down the mountain, they get him into a tent, they start warming him up, they do everything they can to dress his wounds to stabilize him. And some of the other hunters in their group ride their horses through the storm to get to a phone to call for help. It had been about four hours since Bram had been attacked. The men are able to call for a helicopter, but it wasn't able to land on this mountain in the storm, so it had to wait in Gardner for the weather to clear. So it's a really harrowing night and they have to keep Bram conscious. The doctor notices that he has some gas gangrene that's starting to appear on his wounds, which is something that can kill you pretty quickly. But finally at daybreak, they all hear the sound of the rotor blades cutting through the air and the helicopter landing nearby. And Bram is loaded in and flown to a hospital first in Mammoth and then to Billings. So his father and his brother and their friends start searching the next morning, but they're intercepted by some of the men who had helped Bram get through the night and they then get quickly off of Horseshoe Mountain and go to Billings to find Bram at the hospital. He would end up spending 18 days in this hospital and doctors were able to save his leg, but they warned him that his life would be very different now. And then he would probably never be able to ride a horse again. No, that's like the worst thing, right? For him. For anyone. But within two months, he was on a horse again and Bram in some, some of his interviews said that the encounter never really stopped him from doing things that he wanted to do in his life. Doctors didn't know how tough he is. Nope. What? He said that ain't nothing. That's a weird thing to tell someone. They'll, it doesn't seem like riding a horse would be that prohibitive of an activity. You've never had a doctor tell you that. I'm trying to think now. Yeah. Maybe I will say like, just wasn't listening. Writing a horse, you, you use some weird muscles that you never think you would use. I'm sure you do. But like people with prosthetics and stuff can ride horses, you know, maybe you're not like at a full gallop or like in the equestrian games or whatever. But it is kind of a weird thing to say, like you're never going to be able to do again. I don't know. Yeah, I could, I'm ignorant on that though. So I could be totally wrong. Well, the doctor was totally wrong because he was riding a horse in less than two months. Yeah. So quick turner. Doctor just says that to everyone. He's probably the janitor or something. Just look. Yeah. Oh, you're never riding a horse again. They just say that to everyone in Billings in the hospital. So the reason this one reminds me of the Revenant, we kind of talked about this. It's very close. Like he's out hunting alone. He gets hit by a bear with a cub. You know, there's this initial struggle that's bad, but not that bad. But then, you know, further movement once the bear is kind of neutralized, him leads to more punishment. And then in in Bram's case, he actually is able to kill the bear. Well, I guess in the Revenant, he kills it too, doesn't he? They fall down the cliff together. He does kill it, but not after it. It mauls him some some more first. Yeah. So it's actually really close to the same. Yeah, that's kind of amazingly close. Yeah. So pretty cool. That's amazing. Yeah. Yeah. Crazy story of Riza. I like the anger. I'm going to try that. Yeah. Yeah. If I ever get attacked by a bear. We should add that into like the what what to do if you're attacked by a bear. Really mad. Yeah. That's how Mike's going to get through episodes. That's I'm like the Hulk. That's my secret. I'm always mad. What does life look like for the bear cub after this situation? Is it doomed? Really depends on what year of cub it was. So this is September. So say it was a cub that was born that year. There's a chance it survives like a fairly decent chance even. The hard thing is going to be like finding a den and making it through the winter, but there is a chance. I shouldn't say decent, but there's a chance. If it was a cub, like a two year old cub or one and a half or whatever the next September would have been, it's pretty likely that it. Well, it's decent chance then that it makes it through the winter. That can probably survive. And they stay in weaned. How long are they with their the mother bear? It's about two years. Their moms about two and a half years. OK, so yeah, it could have been close to maybe being separated from the parent anyway at that point. There's been there's been some research on bear cubs and like abandoned bear cubs. And they're a little bit more resilient than we thought they were. Like they often, you know, if they can make it through these kind of like big things like hibernation and whatnot, then they can do OK. OK, but a lot of them still get killed, too. But it's not like a death sentence like you might expect is what I'm trying to say. OK, let's do outies for this one. Who wants to go first? I'll give it seven. OK, I like seven. Now, pretty pretty bad in the moment. Had to put his leg back in that counts for a lot and then tie it and then had to wait a long time for the helicopter. No sand in it and kept the leg and rode a horse again. Yeah, he did ride a horse again. Yeah. Would it have been like a eight without that? You know, yeah, or nine. There was a really good photo of his like wound in one of these after they had grafted it and like done everything. And it's like almost his whole thigh that had been ripped out. It's pretty crazy how much it got. And he's scouting for that. Oh, yeah. The one I think I was going to go with a seven as well. The one thing I guess I should never try to diminish how bad these experiences are. Like it's not really my prerogative. That's not what we're doing. But it was like. We're having a little fun. Relatively a fast, you know, like the attack happened and it's not like he had to wait like 18 hours and ride back on a bumpy boat like some of our attack victims. Yeah. But the scalping in the leg and all that stuff. I'll go seven. Seven feels right. Yeah, I'm going to agree with seven. I it didn't seem to have the psychological torment on him that it does some people to where it just like completely altered the rest of the trajectory of his life. You know, I might even go six. He had the really bad leg wound. He spent 18 days in the hospital, but he probably had a really bad headache. Yeah, I'm sure he had a bad headache. You know, seven feels right. I'll stick with seven. Seven's all around the headache. Yeah, because the head you swayed me with the headache. All right. And just for everyone listening, obviously it's a 10 out of 10 in every person's life. Yeah, but we're just doing the most extreme animal attack cases. So we're rating 10 out of 10 out cheese on a tooth and claw scale from one to 10. Right. Like for me, the 10 I always think of is Cynthia Dussell bacon, getting your arms chewed off by the bear. Yeah. And a zero is like. And I think I gave that one like an eight. Yeah. Yeah, I don't. Yeah, I don't think you. Well, no, you don't like when they get sand in their sand in the wound. Yeah. It's coarse, rough. Yeah, it's everywhere. OK. You ever wake up sweaty, freezing or just uncomfortable? The temperature in your bedroom can make or break your sleep. That's why I switched to Miracle Made Sheets. They're inspired by NASA technology and use silver infused temperature regulating fabric to help you sleep perfectly all night long. And I've never felt like that was more important than right now. 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I don't know if it's the main character, but our main character. He got all wet. Sure. And what I mean by that is like the weather plays a big part in the feeling or the experience of the movie or book or TV show or whatever. I chose Twister, just a movie about Twisters. Yeah, it's like literally the one the movie's about. It made me want to see a Twister my whole life. Yeah, me too. Twins, twins. Twins. We got twins. Have you seen Twisters? I still haven't seen the new one. Oh, yeah. I thought it was fun. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. That hot guy is in it. Glenn. That's kind of not hot, but also is pretty hot. But then if you look at him too long, you're like, is he hot? Cappy Bar or whatever they say he looks like. He does look like a Cappy Bar. A hot one. Yeah. He's got a certain charm to him. He was in that movie that I love. Everybody wants some. It's the first thing I ever saw him in and he was my favorite character in that. So I have a soft spot for him. We both liked Chad, or yeah, Chad Powers. I love Chad Powers. And it was like, that was, we were not expecting to like Chad Powers. No, he was great in that. I loved that show. Yeah. Mike, what do you, what do you want to pick? I'm going to go with, and this is a little far removed from even like a secondary or tertiary character, but the Titans in the animated Hercules movie. Oh yeah. I love those. Man, with the big ice Titan and then like the Magma one, the tornado one. This is like by far my favorite part of that movie when all the stars align and they get like released from their prison. I think it's so cool. Yeah, I like that one. And then they're going the wrong way and Hades has to tone to go the other. It's so funny West. They're not too easy to defeat, I feel like. It's true. Yeah, pretty anticlimactic, but on their march towards Mount Olympus, I was getting hyped. Yeah. Oh, I was getting, I was sweating. I have to stand up every time. Have you ever seen that Tarsim sing Hercules story? It's called, it's really a crazy movie. Mickey Rourke is in it. The Immortals? Immortals. I think it's called. Oh, Henry Cavill? Oh yeah, I love that movie. Mickey Rourke is in that. I totally forget about that. Yeah, he's like the villain. Yeah, OK. No, I've I've always liked that movie. Cool. It's great. All right, I picked Fargo. I think the movie Fargo, just the cold, blowing wind and snow, that entire movie, every time they step outside, it just seems so terrible and uncomfortable that it just gives the whole movie this feeling of kind of like claustrophobia and dread. And I think that wouldn't that movie would feel very different. It was like sunny in Miami. So I think the weather is a big factor there. It also called Fargo. So. All right. OK, well, isn't that kind of like weird that it is called Fargo? Because I don't think the movie takes place. Isn't it like in Minnesota? Most of it takes place in Minnesota, but I think the murder takes place in Fargo. Something happens in Fargo. Yeah. All right, your favorite Simpsons side character, because I played that clip. Of McBain. I'm curious to know your favorite side character. I'm going to let you guys define what you see as a side character. For me, people like Mr. Burns or even like Moe aren't main cast. Side characters. They're still like main cast. Yeah. So I'll give you mine so that you guys can kind of know where I was looking. I picked Troy McClure. He, he, every time he shows up in any episode, it ends up being like the funniest 20 to 30 seconds of that episode, in my opinion. He's the movie star. And maybe one of my favorite moments in all of Simpsons is when there's like the educational movie about eating meat and he's the host of it. It is so funny. I love Troy McClure. Phil Hartman was the goat for Simpsons. The perfect voice for it. Yeah. I went, I'm going with Kent Brockman. Oh, good pick. I, there's something about like the parody of news anchors and news, like the weekly, the Norm McDonald, anytime anyone's doing like a satire of news and newscasters just works so well for me. I think he's the funniest. Yeah, I love Kent Brockman. Just like a straight face delivery of like, said it before, I'll say it again. Democracy does not work. There's that one where they, everyone thinks Homer's a sexual predator and they get like heat, heat infrared to look into his house. And they're, they're like, right now Homer Simpson is basting in his own juices. And they're like looking at a turkey in the oven. So funny. The delivery is so good. Jeff. I'd go chief. Wiggum. It's another great pick. Yeah. Great. Perfect show for the first, you know, or seasons like two through 10, two through nine. Okay. We're going to do a quick, we're Mike and Jeff paying attention. There's only going to be three questions and then there's a bonus one if it's a tie. Who wants to go first? I wish all police were like chief Wiggum. Just totally inept. Just like bumbling and like good natured and like well meaning, but just totally incompetent. Yeah. Well, maybe not all of them. Yeah. All right. Who wants to go first? I think I normally choose you choose. Okay. I'll go first. All right. Wow. Question one. Question one. He wants a ball. What is the universal sign for distress among hunters? Three bullets in the air. Yes. Three shots into the air. Whatever. Correct. Who cares? Jeff. Get me on the semantics. I don't care. That's zero points then. No points. No, you got it. You got it. You got it. When you said three bullets at first, I was like no and then you said in the air and that was perfect. You nailed it. Jeff. Because you could throw three bullets, Mike. Yeah. What town did I use as a reference for where Horseshoe Mountain is located? Cook. Cook. City. Cook City. Correct. One to one. Wow. I said cook twice. Is that still cat? Cook. Cook City. Sure. Yeah. I am still counting it. Mike. In which year did this story take place? 95. 95. B.C. Right. 95. 80. It'd be two. Nerd. A.J.P. Zero points. I don't have any points yet. Jeff. What is the name of the species of moth that a lot of grizzlies feed on in the late summer in the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem? I don't know. White moth. Mike, do you have a steel? I can get close. I'm almost certainly not going to get it exactly, right? It's like the army cutworm moth or something. That's exactly right. Is it really? Yes. Those three words in that order? Army cutworm moth. Yep. Correct. Look at me go. All right. So it's three one. Jeff, you're going to have to get both of these to win. Mike. What town in Montana was Bram from? Shoot. It's Bryce, Bruce, Bram and B.R. It's another B.R. word. Bro, Brodrick, Brody. Incorrect. Shoot. What is it? It's Mike was very close. I know. I know it's just a hint because it's more interesting if Jeff gets it. Bro. Brocy. Bro Back Mountain. Brodice. Brodice. B-R-O-A-D-U-S. Brodice. I think I'm saying it right. Jeff, just for kicks. Which state in the lower, no, no, sorry. Yeah. Which state in the lower 48 has the highest number of grizzly bears? Montana. Montana. Correct. All right. Mikey won that round. We didn't put anything on the line. This one was just for bragging rights. Good game, Jeff. Okay. Don't brag about it. I promise you I won't. All right. Quickly, I wanted to ask you guys something you recommend from this week. Anything out there that you recommend? You didn't say from this week though. This week. Sorry. Something you recommend this week. Not because I didn't have to be from this week. I have Jim Carrey the mask. That's fine. But I haven't seen that since I was a kid. It's okay. That can be your answer. So I don't know. I don't know if it's still good. So I'll say, let's just say no reason. But I think it'd be nice to have a hot girlfriend. Wow. You know? Yeah. So I recommend having a hot girlfriend because I think that'd be really fun and nice. Yeah, I'll give that a try. All right. Cool. Thanks for the tip. Yeah. Yeah. I never thought about it that way. You're still talking about the mask. Going on a road trip, right? There's something. Okay. Yeah. Maybe I'll just watch the mask. Yeah. I haven't had a sloppy Joe since I was probably eight years old. And then I was walking through the grocery store I frequent and they just had like a display with sloppy Joe materials all over the place. And I was like, you know what? Let's go for it. So three days ago, I got sloppy Joe stuff and made someone. I was like, you know what? Maybe not every day, but every once in a while, sloppy Joe is going to really hit. And then two days later, I went to my dad's place and he's like, yo, I made sloppy Joe. So it's like, no way. So for two out of three days for the first time in probably like 30 years, I had sloppy Joe's and I'm just like, I take it as a sign. A higher power is telling me to consume more sloppy. And I recommend it. They're pretty good. You know, they're not going to change your life, but let's go sloppy Joe insane. Is I had that happen earlier this year for like the first time I think I've ever made sloppy Joe really. Yeah. I even put cheese on it. It's delicious. They're super good. Right. Yeah. So easy to. There definitely was a period of my life where they were like in the rotation. Like I was going to get a sloppy Joe every once in a while. Yeah. Serve to me. Not me too child. Growing up hamburger helper kind of like took it. It's like space for a bit. Yeah. They probably make a sloppy Joe mix. All right. Mine that I'm going to recommend and I've been a little bit annoying even about recommending this one is the show widows bay. It's on Apple TV, but it's a horror comedy. It's about this mayor who's like struggling to kind of convince the residents of his town that supernatural stuff isn't happening when it's obviously happening. And I find that generally horror comedies either lean too far into horror or too far into comedy. And this one just like hits it perfect. Like the horror is genuinely scary and good. And the comedy is genuinely funny and really well acted and done. And it's been probably since and or that I've liked to show this much. I just absolutely love it. I'm waiting for each new episode every week with like baited breath. Just really, really, really enjoying it. So check it out. I will. I will say too. Just for sports corner real quick. Yeah. Danielle's as uninterested in sports as anyone I know. And like even she had to like be like, wow, when the Yama is an insane looking person to play basketball, it's pretty fun to watch him in the game. Yeah. He's yeah, he's my favorite player right now. I really like him. Yeah. Great series happening. OK, Steve, San Antonio is pretty outrageous. Yeah, double overtime last night. Yeah. Living up to all of its promises so far. All right. So Dennis Bram's dad had to quit looking for him when they were on the mountain, even though he really didn't want to quit. So I wanted to ask you guys something that you had to quit that you really didn't want to quit. You know, I'll go first on this one. Oxies. No, not. Is my dark answer, but it's hard to quit. Yeah. There's a reason that people get addicted to them. Yum, yum. My answer is like kind of a little bit deeper on this one, but organized religion was like something that I really didn't want to stop doing because I think it gave me a lot of like purpose and like kind of confidence about life, you know, that is like such a nice security blanket to have when you believe in something, you know, really strongly, you kind of just feel like you're on the right track and you know what's going to happen to you. And yeah, it was like a hard thing to give up, but I just felt like I had to. So organized religion is my answer. Yeah. I want to be a part of a disorganized religion. Yeah. You know, yeah, that's kind of what I feel like I'm in now, where I just kind of like have disorganized thoughts about religion. There's no rules here at Tooth and Cult. We're not very organized. Well, going off that one, I had recess when I was a kid. I hated when I had to go inside from recess. Yeah. But I think I agree with Wes a lot too, but not as hard as leaving recess. Recess is way harder. Like you had to leave recess every day. Wes only had to leave church once. Three times a day in elementary school. Yeah. You had three recesses? Yeah. 15 minutes lunch and then another 15 minute recess. Wow. Yeah, we had three recesses too. I'm trying to remember. I guess me and Jeff went to the same schools. So, yeah. I am picking going to bed at a reasonable. Well, so I'm giving up going to bed when my body naturally wants to, which is around like three or four a.m. I've been that way my whole life and it just causes problems, you know, like there's just too many things, you know, with like friends and family and work, of course, like it's just not reasonable. Yeah. What was the thing where I had to order a pizza to your house? It's not episode. We just didn't post it. Yeah. He did post it. Mike did everything right, but it was that and to defend Mike, it was a Spotify issue. Spotify messaged me with like a personalized apology about it, which is really surprising. But yeah, it made me feel a little vindicated though, so I appreciate it. Yeah. But when the shit hit the fan with that one, he was just like. Come on. Out to like 430 p.m. Ordered pizza. Yeah, I ordered one that I thought would taste good at least. And then just in the instructions, I put knock and ring the doorbell. So good. But like I have to be careful. I have to be paying attention because like if I'm not keyed in on a clock, I'm just up till 4 or 5 a.m. No problem. You know, just don't start feeling sleepy till around then. You know, something that I this just kind of piggybacking off of that where you're not looking at a clock that often. And I know everyone in modern times says this, but like something I'm trying to equate a lot more is just like being on my phone because I've just watched that documentary, The Crash. Have you guys seen that one? It's about this girl who you like it's not crash. It's a documentary called The Crash. It's about this like 18 year old or 17 year old girl. Jason Statham's heart stops if he doesn't have it. That's crank, crank. Jeff. Crash is even worse somehow. This this documentary is about this girl who like probably on purpose runs her car into a brick wall with two friends inside and kills them. And they're like Gen Z kids and there's so many videos of them like out having fun. But it's just everyone has a camera on them at all times. Like they are never not recording their lives. And it made me feel really sad because it was like I thought about all the fun times I had growing up that were just like, you know, they're just in my memory. And that's kind of beautiful. They're not like on camera. And yeah, it made me feel like I need to be on my phone a lot less. So anyway, all right. Let's do a couple of quick listener questions from Patreon and then we will wrap this up. So I have a few here. Michelle says, if you were a type of pasta, what would you be? Michelle Obama, right? It's got to be straight from Michelle Obama, our ex first lady. I think I'd be spaghetti. I just think spaghetti is like well rounded and a nice pasta. So I think. But you're only one noodle though, right? Just one spaghetti noodle would be that two mile long one. That we want to create. Yeah. You'd never pee on your own pants. That's my answer. Spaghetti. It's getting. What are you guys, what are you picking for your pasta? It'd be a shell. Yeah, I'll be your orzo. OK. Oh, wow. Why? Yeah. Yeah, just a little tiny crazy. Right. Why do you say that? Because there's so much of it in one. You're just one orzo, though. If I know. I'm a lot to handle. I'm chaotic. I'm all over everything. This one's from Yash. Yash says, a genie grants you any wish and as many as you want. Hold on. Why do you say a shell? It's pasta. I like the ocean because he likes being in a shell. The water is nice, feels right. I like that. Yeah, I'm dead. There's no indignation over your answer. I just wanted, I was just curious. My best friend says something I don't fully understand. Like, wow, I really want to pick my. You guys took the obvious ones. Mine doesn't really have a good reason behind it. I just like spaghetti. So I answered this the worst. You want to be a two mile long spaghetti noodle because you've always been short and you wish you would call. All right. Well, speaking of always been short, Yash says, a genie grants you any wish and as many as you want, but you grow four inches every time you make one. The only rule is that no wish can affect your height. Two extra wishes. And you will grow four inches with each wish no matter what, no way around it. How many wishes would you make? And then I, you know, I want to say concurrently, what if you shrink four inches too? How many would you make? Probably one both way. I feel like one wishes all I would need are like, I don't know, because you don't want to get too reliant on. Because you wish for more wishes. Well, you have as many as you have as many as you want. You don't have. If you wasted your, that'd be a terrible. That's just the worst answer. Wait, you have as many as you want? Yes. That's what it said. So you can make as many wishes as you want, but you grow four inches every time. So he would be like, yeah, you still get that. But you would grow four inches. You would grow four inches. You wasted a wish. I'm going to say I would do two if it's grow, one if it shrink, because that put me at five four and I'm feeling pretty short at five four. Not no, no, like no, no shots fired against my five four kings out there. But I don't. Don't worry. They're all they're all wish they're like, I'm not getting short. Yeah. But I mean, I would want one wish at least. I feel like I'd go like three or four wishes in the shrinking because then you can be like a you can be a hobbit double when they're filming another Lord of the Rings movie. Yeah. You know, that's true. I would go like six wishes shorter. And then my last one would be I want to grow three feet. Yeah, you could just wish until you're like, like microscopic. That'd be fun. Well, wouldn't you cease to exist? Because you lose four inches every time. Yeah, but you. Yeah, that's true. So you just you can't like four inches as this small as you can be. That'd be cool though, still. All right. You'd actually be careful about snakes. Your four inches. All right. Next one. I just asked for like mystics ability to shape shift it to any one. No, you can't you can't change your height no matter what. That was one of the conditions. That's it was a condition. Yeah, you got it. All right. You missed a lot of those conditions. This one's from Margaret. We've talked a lot about bears and bear spray, but I'm not sure. I remember hearing about when to actually use it. Is there an optimal distance you'd want to deploy your bear spray when charged? And does that chart or does that change based on the brand of spray? And do you have a preferred brand? I'd always wear it either use it too soon or too late in the heat of the moment. So most bear spray is rated for about 30 feet. So for me, I would spray it a little bit before the bear is at 30 feet. And that is because the thing you're trying to do with spray is put it in between you and the bear. So when you spray it, you're not necessarily like, like hoping to hit the bear in the face. If you do get in the face, great, you know, it's going to work really well. But if you can put that cloud of bear spray into the air in between you and the bear, it has to then pass through that to get to you. And so it's not bad to spray it a little early because the bear's still going to hit it. It's aerosolized. It hangs in the air for a little bit. I sprayed mine once on accident and then walked back through where it sprayed it like five, six minutes later. And it still like choked me out. So it stays in the air for a while. So I would spray it about 40 feet, probably is where I would start spraying with another bear. Just as long as I have the opportunity to ask a follow up. So yeah, I've heard you say, I think when you discharge it, that the can is basically useless. That's it for that one, right? Like you don't want to keep that around for like a potential next time. Yeah. So would you just waste all of the contents? Just spray it until there's nothing left in there? I would. So like when I say you don't want to use it again, I mean, you don't want to like put it in your closet and use it like three months down the line. Right. But you get about seven seconds of spraying a can. So if I sprayed it, you know, for three seconds and the bear ran off, I have 100 percent of keeping that can on me until I'm like to my car or whatever, until I'm out of that situation, because the bear could come back and you're going to want those other seconds. Sure. OK. So that's the main thing. But I, yeah. So for me, as far as like if there's a spray brand that I recommend, right now, they're pretty much all the same. I actually, I'm working on one to kind of change that a little bit. So we'll see when that comes out. But I there's not one that I prefer over the others. It's not it's not going to be really different in that regard. But we'll get into that once it's out. So, yeah, I don't I don't like prefer one over the other. Have you heard what Joe Rogan thinks of bear spray? I doubt he likes it. I haven't really heard. Yeah, I think he's kind of a gun guy. I think he has mostly. Just hold it. Yeah, you're just introducing just throwing that grenade out into the world there, Jeff. Um. Would a bear spray have a Scoville rating? It probably will, right? Because it's it's capsaicin based, right? Capsaicin, yeah. Yeah, yeah, a billion. And people like something that people get kind of confused about, too, is it's not like the bears eating it and it's hot. It's getting into like its mucus membranes because it's it's suspended in oil and in the air. So it's getting in its eyes and its nasal passages. It's inhaling it. It's it's really, really nasty stuff. Would it hurt the bear more from one foot away? It probably wouldn't be as effective from one feet away. And the bear is probably still going to get you. But it would hurt. Well, I don't think so. No. Maybe in the long run, because you're putting it all on its face, but I don't think it would stop it quite as quick. All right, this one's from Trey, T-R-E-S. Question for all three of you. Wes recently said that human life is more valuable than leopards. I feel like that's a little out of context, but true. But leopards deserve to exist. How many people would leopards have to kill per year before you would start to agree with eradicating all leopards? Assume that as long as one leopard remains, that this number of people will be killed. Huh. Yeah, it's a good question. It'd be a lot. This feels like kind of. A trap. Like a hard one. It is kind of a trap to answer because we're talking about like parts of the world where we don't live. Right. So I'm going to say like a mountain lion in the U.S. instead. And I feel like it's a little bit less prickly or, you know, whatever that way. And I would say that if they killed per year. Fifty. No, 150,000 people a year, I would be like, we got to get rid of mountain lions. Yeah, that's a lot. Well, how many people do snakes kill every year? That's why I stopped when I started to say 50,000. Yeah. And like I wouldn't think snakes belong. Yeah. Right. I would never have for a moment thought like we should get rid of all snakes. So like that number is going to have to be huge. Yeah, you're right. It's probably bigger than 150,000. But again, that it happens in parts of the world that just don't concern me. So like, yeah, I don't know. Yeah. Well, you guys have heard my take, though, that I think leopard lives are more valuable than humans. Yeah, right. More. It's one. Yeah. No, it's less. Or it's less than one. It's like. Millions, millions and millions of people and you're still not killing leopards. Yeah, billions. Well, you have to have a number. What's your number where you're finally like, OK, this isn't worth saving this leopard. Leopards is getting out of this calculator. 8.3 billion. OK, OK. Just letting everyone on Earth die before he kills a single leopard. All right, respect. OK, great question. Kill all the leopards. Yeah, right. But there could just be one and they're still going to kill that many people. Yeah, all the leopards. Quick one for Mary here. Are any of you going to buy the meanest tier of Lego set? Shoot, cool, six hundred and fifty dollars or whatever it is. Well, then yeah, no. It is the most tempted I've ever been to buying. Pretty sweet Lego set, but I don't really have a space for it. So what do you mean you have your whole shed? Yeah, my shed's pretty cozy already. You don't even park in your garage. I do park in my garage. I just didn't want you guys for here. I'm tempted. I asked Danielle actually two days ago to buy me La Baratier Lego set. Oh, wow. And she declined pretty immediately. Oh, how much was how much is that one? I'd be more tempted to get that one, I think, actually. Yeah, it made me want it more. At first, I was kind of joking and now I'm like. I'll get it for you. Yeah, I'll show you. I'll show Danielle what it means to be a good, I don't know, good burner. The only problem is I really hate instructions. Yeah, yeah, I would like to see you put that together. I might just like do it like when I buy anything and just try to put it together with that reading. Yeah. It'd be interesting. All right. Well, that's it for questions. That's it for the episode. Thank you, everyone, for listening. What was our last Patreon episode? It was Mike's and it was about. Oh, yeah, it was about the Pope and his elephant. Pope's a really fun episode about a really strange little section of history where a pope in the 1500s had an elephant. Really fun episode. Jeff had to leave. I scared the cleaner of my hair being so bad. I loved it when he came in to you just said, I'm recording. Yeah. Well, he gave a look like what the hell's going on. Yeah, that's funny. Did you finish listening to the episode, though, Jeff? These don't have to. Yes or no question for this. I listen, no judgment. I'm just curious. No, I haven't. OK. What happened? That elephant's. And then he. Oh, that we shouldn't put that in. We got to cut that. Just blimp it. Just go bleep. OK, anyway, if you're interested in that, check out our Patreon. We really have been happy with the relationship we have with Patreon. So we're trying to push people there and it's $10 a month and you're going to get access to our whole backlog of bonus content. We try to force people there. Yeah, we are forcing people to do like we'll leave cliffhanger at three part episodes will we can't come on a trip if you're not a subscriber. What else do we have? There's a lot of benefits to being a subscriber. It's what you can't be in our Discord server. Well, you got to listen to our ads. I have to listen to those ads, man. All right. Well, thanks, everyone. And we will talk to you soon. Love you. So yeah, love you.