How the Goonch Stole Christmas

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Our subscribers tend to really love it and we only charge ten bucks a month so you can get that today and you'll actually get early access to part two of Ghost Grizzlies of Colorado and you're going to hear a pretty crazy story about a man who battles a grizzly bear with only an arrow. So get it today. We promise you it'll be worth your while. It's a great value for a lot of extra two-thin-cloth content. Just google two-thin-cloth Patreon in your favorite web browser or search us on Apple for Apple Gris Club and sign up today. Hey everyone. Hey everyone. Patrons. We got treatment for you. West is doing his first Patreon. Yes. I was just about to say I think this is the first one I've led. Do you need eating pointers? Yeah, give me some pointers guys. What do you want? Just relax a bit. Relax a bit. And I find it's helpful to not do like very much prep. Like no research, no prep. Yeah, that has worked really well for you. And if you would like find a story online just never even read it. Just go straight into like don't pre-read it at all. Just read it. Just read it. If you forget any details, just make them up. You can make up better stories than real stories usually. All right. Well, hey, have you guys been getting ready for the holidays? I just drove home. Oh, to Montana. Yeah. Jeff only visits when I'm not there. Probably the only time I've been here without you. Have you guys been watching many Christmas movies? You watch home alone yet? I have not been watching very many Christmas movies. You said that. I saw the new Spider-Man, which I love to watch. Yeah, that counts too. And then you saw the Matrix. Yep. You'll tell us nothing about it. Zipped. I'm zipped up. You know which one I read about that I want to rewatch was a scrooge the Bill and Marie. Yeah, I'd like to rewatch that. I like a dark Christmas movie. I remember we watched Krampus a few years ago and you didn't like it. It was kind of a weird find. I like it a lot. I really like that director though. He did trick or treat too, which is one of my favorite Halloween movies. And he did a Godzilla movie. He did a building of the monsters I think. Yeah, Steven Spielberg. I absorbed. It's a wonderful life kind of was on during a family Christmas gathering. And that's about all I can take of that movie. We watch that movie every Christmas Eve. We have my whole life. And at this point, I just I love it. It's a great movie, but I don't I don't know if I could really sit down and watch the whole thing in one sitting every again. You know, it's one that entered my line up last year was the animated movie, Clouse. Oh, yeah, you were talking really about that. It's like a very pleasant, just nice movie. It's a really good one. Yeah. Okay, I got a question for you guys though. Which of the booby traps in Home Alone would you lease like to have happened to you in the original Home Alone? That's the only original movie I watch this year. Yeah. Well, I'd say just Macoli cook in Home Alone's. Okay. If you want to pull from number two, you can. Okay. I don't I just don't know any of those ones. You like could have killed him with the bricks. The bricks is pretty dangerous. Well, even like the iron him dropping the clothes iron on his face. Yeah. The first one definitely could have killed him. But the one the one that always gets me are the Christmas ornaments when he steps on them. Like the bulbs and stuff. And they're all that just the summary. It takes me out of the movie because it's just like so obvious. And like he just stomps on like every or yeah, or or yeah. No, it's all right. So he yeah, he like slams every single one of them. And I'm just like, okay, this is the stupidest thing. Well, it's also funny because he's already gotten like hit by the iron, had the nail on his foot, all that stuff. And then he still doesn't take the time to like look when he goes through the window, like just a quick glance at the ground. Yeah. So you know, it's weird in that movie. They get beat up like really bad. Yeah. Like all the booby traps. And then just like some 90-year-old guy bonks him with a shovel and they're just both unconscious. Completely. Yeah. Huge thing of paint nailing you in the face and you're just like, oh, that is my shovel tapping you in the head. That's a good point. I also like that of all the traps. I mean, I know tarantulas can do some damage, but like yeah, all things said and done. That's probably the least like painful one they all went through. But that's the one that everybody remembers just because of the scream. Daniel Stern's scream at that point. Yeah. All right. So what's your guys' answer? Mine's the nail. That's the one that like, yeah, if I had to pick one from the first movie, it'd be the nail. But my favorite trap of any of the home alone movie is one through five or there six now. I have no idea. I think the six one's just kidding. The nose. So the second movie when Daniel Stern once again is screaming when he gets shocked and he turns into the skeleton. That's just so fun. He's the skeleton. That's great. Mike was telling me the plot of the fourth or fifth one is like the burglars are dead and he's like booby trapping like ghosts. Was I telling you that? I think I was making that up. On the IMDB, there's a home alone where it's like booby trapping ghosts that are trying to like, and it got made. I mean, that's like five. Where do you go from there? You know, you should watch it sometime. Well, we could talk about home alone for hours, but we're not going to. We're going to talk instead about the Gooch. Well, let me tell you guys how I got here. So I really wanted to do a story on. I think you know how Patreon and Ebis that's what. Let me tell you about animals. Yeah. I wanted to do a story about an attack that happened on Christmas or like Christmas Eve or something. And so I was googling just animal attacks and like with Christmas day and all these things. And somehow I stumbled upon a headline that said Gooch attacks in the Cali River India. And I was I was really curious what a Gooch was. Okay. And so I did some research and we're going to learn about it. But I was so into it that it kind of stole the idea of like doing a Christmas story. So I'm going to call this story how the Gooch stole Christmas. All right. Good. I bet there are a lot of animal attacks on Christmas day because you know, little Timmy is getting like a puppy and grandpa is going to trip through that dog and stuff. I found a good kangaroo one that was like Christmas Eve, but the Gooch stole it. Okay. Gooch stole Christmas. I'm excited to know for this. All right. First of all, how do you guys feel about about Gooch's? Oh, it sounds like a sexual aroused was almost the word I was going to use. Yeah. Well, it sounds like what's the it sounds like Gooch. Yeah. Yeah. Kicked in the Gooch. How big do you guys think a Gooch can get? We don't know what they are. There's just no frame of reference here. All right. Ten. And in. I think they can get ten big. All right. Cool. So you guys don't know much about Gooch's, huh? Does anyone we're going to learn about Gooch's? So is the Gooch a doctor, Sue's character? The Gooch is not the Grinch is, but this is how the Gooch stole Christmas, not the Grinch. Okay. So it's a beautiful cold blue river. It runs from its headwaters in the Himalayas before widening and flowing through the jungles and forests of northern India and Western Nepal. As I mentioned, it's named after the Hindu god of destruction and death, Kali, and the river forms a border between northern India and Western Nepal for a lot of its journey. It's a really important and sacred river to the people in the area, but in the late 90s and the 2000s, something was lurking in the waters of the Kali river, the Gooch. So in 1998, a 17-year-old Nepali boy, Dil Bahadur, which makes me think of Bahadur, Soarans, Fortress and Mordor, but it's Bahadur. It's not spelled the same way. He was swimming in the Kali river while he was waiting for a ferry to take him across the river into India. So his girlfriend was watching from the shore. She's smiling and waving to the swimming boy and they're in really high spirits because they're actually traveling to India in the hopes of starting a new life together in a new country. Unfortunately, those dreams were about to be cut short. As Dil swam around, a large predator was attracted to his movement in the water and silently slipped through the water toward him. Dil's girlfriend and several other onlookers then watched in horror as without a sound he's pulled underwater by some unseen monster. He doesn't splash or scream, he's just gone in an instant. So they had launched this expansive search. They searched for multiple days, along three miles of the river, but they never find a single hint that he was ever there. They don't find his body, they don't find any clothing, they find nothing. He's just completely gone. A few months later, about a mile downstream in this town called Dharma Got, a young boy was washing himself in the river and about knee deep water when something grabbed him by the legs. His father was standing nearby, heard the boy scream that something was pulling him into the water and I'd grabbed him, but he couldn't get to the river in time to save his son and the boy disappeared beneath the water of the river. Kali, again, really quick, really fast, just gone. And they again launched a search, they again looked for the body, can't find anything. That's weird since it happened in really relatively shallow water. That's yeah. So not long after it is speaking. I can't think of any animal like that with yeah. I've got one guess. I'll give you a hand. It rhymes with mooch or mooch, I guess. Okay, so not long after a rancher sees a 600 pound buffalo get pulled under water by something that the farmer describes as larger than the buffalo. What? So that's the crazy story. A Gucci is what's like a Gucci is something else. This is a Gooch, but we're not to it yet. Okay. Yeah, wait for category is Jeff. So I'm saying they Gucci. You're saying good. You're saying it wrong. The hidden predator did not strike again until nine years later in Nagarugat when an 18 year old Atal Kumar was swimming in the river Kali with a friend. His sudden scream shocked his friend and local villagers who turned to see the boy pulled under the water. This time though, a local villager, Suranda Bora saw the attacker and he said it looked like any elongated pig and he identified it as a soos. A soos is just kind of like a mythological fish monster that can suck in prey from a distance as far as I could gather like Kirby. These attacks are happening. Yeah, like Kirby. He's more of a cloud monster. Yeah. These attacks are happening. No one really knows what they are. Three people have died. A buffalo has died and it's kind of this crazy mystery. So if you guys ever watch the show River Monsters, I know it's on Animal Planet and it's this guy Jeremy Wade who goes and he investigates these kind of things and he catches fish that are like potentially dangerous or whatever that live in the river, not so much ocean fish. He gets more river. He does. So one of his first episodes was actually to go investigate this animal that he wasn't sure what it was. So I'm going to kind of run you through how that looked his investigation. So in 2009, he traveled to the Coli River and along the search, he's visiting these locations where some of the deaths happened and he's talking to eyewitnesses and one of the first theories he comes up with is whirlpools because it's like a pretty fast moving river and for someone just to get sucked under immediately and not show back up like a whirlpool is kind of something that would make sense. But the thing that doesn't make sense is that all of these men when they were killed, they were in like really shallow water, waste deep. Actually, the third was swimming across the river, but the rest of them were in waste deep water. And the thing that really doesn't make sense about it is the second one, the boy who was killed in front of his father yelled out something's got me. And the third one, a guy said he thought he saw an elongated pig attacking him. Pigs and whirlpools aren't often confused. Yeah. And also like the fact that they never found the bodies or anything, if they had just drowned, there's a good chance they would have washed up somewhere, but they didn't find anything. So whirlpools were eliminating that possibility. Yeah, throw that out. And like, does he think that it's possible for there to be like some type of predator, like a crocodile or something? Oh, Jeff, once again, right on time with the Segway, the second most obvious culprit after whirlpool was a crocodile. So in India, there's three species of crocodile. We've got your saltwater crocodiles, which we've talked about. And we know is like more than capable of killing a person. Beal guys. Yeah, you've got a margaracrocodile, which also can kill a person or a buffalo. And then you've got a gay reel, gay, gay, gay, gay reel, gay reel. I always say it wrong. I know I've always liked my entire life, but I don't know how to pronounce their name, but they're the ones that have the really long snouts that are super thin and like tons of teeth. And they're fish eaters. Oh, yeah, they're fish eaters. They don't have the capability to kill people. Like they just don't. What kind were you talked about temple of doom? Which ones are those? Those are mugger crocodiles. Lugger. So mugger crocodiles are the most common in India. And saltwater crocodiles don't live on the Kali River, but mugger crocodiles do. So like then they can't use magic either. They can't. What do you mean? Where's that? Just the muggle. Oh, yeah. It is a real bad joke. You know, you got to, you got to get up to that. I like it. I'll take a step away and let go for a while. Anyway, so they, so Jeremy Wade, this guy who's visiting decides to look into mugger crocodiles. Now, the things that don't make sense about it being a mugger crocodile is that these attacks happen pretty far up river on the Kali River where it's still really cold and pretty fast. And mugger crocodiles like really big expansive rivers that are warm and they like to pull themselves up on the bank to sun and whatnot. And in these areas where these attacks happen, no one's ever seen a crocodile. They've never seen them sunning on the banks. And the water is really cold. So it just really doesn't make sense that a mugger crocodile would be up there. And then that's kind of what he said. But I wanted to add, when a crocodile attacks someone, it usually makes a bit more of a commotion. Like you typically see the tail come out of the water or the head or something. And then often even if they pull water would probably get bloody. Right. And even when they pull someone down, like they often come back up with the person in their jaws because as we talked about, they're not great at eating underwater. They have to eat above water. So like tear them up a bit. Right. So it doesn't make sense that it's a crocodile either. So the next option would be a bull shark. Bull shark says we've talked about again. Can live in fresh water and they do travel up the Ganges River and other rivers in India. So that's a real possibility. But again, we're really far upstream. We're in cold fast moving water. And bull sharks tend to be in like bigger rivers and they like to be at confluences. And they generally, if there's a bull shark in the river, you'll like see their fin cutting through the water every once in a while. And again, they like kind of make a mess when they eat. They don't like eat something whole. So you're going to have blood and you're going to have remains and all these other things. But I will say of all the other options besides a Gouche, which we're about to get to. I think bull shark is the only one that there's like a possibility. It's a bull shark. So we're not Gouche's. I could type a whale. We're not close in the door. Hold on. Yeah, it could be. But it's not. We're not close in the door on bull sharks. But we are opening the door on Gouche's. Okay. Okay. All right. I think we can close the door on the other shark. We can keep the door open and name it how the Gouche stole Christmas. Right. Right. Yeah. What are you saying? Like, I think everyone kind of knows that it's going to be a good show. Yeah. Yeah. Unless you're really you're a master store. You're like Stephen King who really am night. Am night. Right. So I'm good. Twists. Yeah. That's a better one. It is a Gouche. I got no twist for you. Yeah. All right. So that's the big reveal. Is the door on bull sharks? No. Because they actually don't know for sure that it's a bull that it's a Gouche. But we're pretty so this fisherman and biologist Jeremy Wade, he talked to the guy who said that it like he had that he thought it was a Sioux. And then he kind of teased out that a Sioux was another name for a Gouche. And a Gouche is actually a massive catfish. So there you finally know what a Gouche is. It's a massive, massive catfish. They're also calling me referred to as the giant devil catfish. They can get massive. They eat a person. So there's there's another type of catfish called the McConn River catfish that lives in Thailand, I think. I don't have this in my notes or anything, but I know they can get up to like 700 pounds. Oh my god. So we're going to talk a little bit more about the Gouche. But they're actually, we don't know a ton about them. So this is going to be a little light on biology. And I'm just going to preface this with like you guys know a lot of times I have lots of facts that I can kind of pull out of the old file index in my brain. This one I don't know anything about catfish. I didn't know anything about Gouche going into this. So everything I learned, from my research and there's not a ton. Okay. But a few things that I did learn, they're found in large rivers of the Indian subcontinent. They typically hang out in big slow pools near a fast moving current. They can grow to be larger than seven feet long. They have massive mouths with large backward facing teeth. Just for reference, like their teeth kind of look like a Mako shark's teeth, but they just don't have quite as many. But they have big teeth like over an inch long. These really big Gouche and they're sharp. They're not like what you would expect from a catfish. They're like big sharp teeth. They are bottom feeders like all their catfish. They're negatively buoyant. Mike, you're a diver. What's it mean when you're negatively buoyant? It means you sink. Right. They sink. They have large flat bony heads that they use to like get food on the bottom. And that also helps as a hydrofoil. It like pushes the water over their head. A really interesting thing about catfish is their bodies are covered with chemo receptors, which means that they can like touch something to taste it. So they don't need to taste with their mouth. They can actually taste with their bodies. I'm glad humans don't have that. Yeah, that would suck. What kind of you? If you're conscious, you can touch something. Touching tongue. Yeah, that's true. Yes. Just depends what you use to touch it. Well, all of their body they can touch it with. They can also smell chemicals in the water with those chemo receptors. And these kind of like these taste receptors and the chemo receptors are really key in them finding food. That's how they use that to find food. And I think that's important for our story. And I'm going to explain why, which is something I kind of pieced together, but wasn't in any of the articles that I read. Okay. They do not have scales. Their bodies are often just naked skin covered in mucus. So sometimes catfish will have like plating almost, but the gooch is like pretty much naked. It's just like a fish that doesn't have scales and it's all mucusy. Most catfish also have a hollow bony spine on their dorsal and pectoral fins. And those spines can be locked into place when something like has them. And then that can like poke something. And it can cause a lot of injury actually. So if you've ever caught a catfish, you have to be careful with their fins because they can't poke you with those spines. And there are actually a few catfish that have venom in those spines and striped eel catfish have a venom so lethal it can kill a human. Wow. The gooch has spines, but it doesn't have any known venom. The world record gooch was six and a half feet long and 250 pounds. But they aren't very heavily fished. And most biologists agree that they can probably get a lot bigger than that. But that's like the world record. The smaller ones are heavily fished. The smaller ones are actually heavily fished. But the bigger ones people just can't catch them. They're really tricky. This guy like Jeremy Wade, he was down there fishing for like weeks and weeks and weeks before he finally caught a big one. He caught lots of little ones, but the big ones are hard to catch. Is the river like clear enough that you could see them in their pools or so when he was looking for them, there was one pool they got to where they saw one and then they like dove in there and saw a bunch of little ones. But then kind of the rain started and everything and the water got pretty murky and they couldn't see him. Okay. So he's out there fishing and looking for gooch. He finds a few there like three to five feet long, but he doesn't encounter one that's big enough to eat a man. But then he talks to more villagers and he learns something really interesting. He learns that there's these places along this river where they light funeral pyres, which essentially they like have a body right next to the river. They burn it and then in Hinduism, there's like a certain level where after the body is burnt to that level, they believe the soul is left to the body and then they just dump the body and the river after that. So they were dumping a lot of bodies into the river and his theory is that one of these gooch was like hanging out near these funeral pyres and just eating human remains on the bottom and getting really big off of human remains. And that kind of makes sense to me because if they're like constantly tasting humans and like eating human remains, then if they taste for human flesh, kind of. And like we've we've dispelled that with like a lot of other animals that most animals don't get a taste for our flesh. What they learn is like people are easy to kill and that's when like man eaters start killing people. It's because we're just easy, but it's not so much because they like our taste. But it is possible that this gooch did kind of acquire that taste. And then when it was swimming in the water and it maybe bumped into one of these boys or was close enough to taste them, it was like, oh, this is my meal. It's the thing I eat. Yeah, exactly. That's my theory that I came up with. Uh-huh. Anyway, he's having a really hard time catching a big gooch. You know, we've all been there. It's hard to catch a big gooch. I've never caught one. So wait, he decides to erect a decoy funeral pyre. He doesn't put anything on it, but he has the ashes going into the water and like the flame right by the water, hoping that that'll attract a big gooch. And weirdly enough, it does. And he hooks into a really big gooch and actually catches the world record gooch at the time, which was over six feet long and 160 pounds. Now, now like they've caught a bigger one that's 230 pounds. But he pulls this fish up and like in the video, it's pretty crazy. Like it has big old teeth and a huge mouth. It's not big enough to kill a person, not even close. But he and other biologists think that it's not too hard to imagine a gooch that's twice as big as this gooch. So if there was one that big, it could easily kill a person. And they also have like a really strong suction so they could like suck them underwater and just as they're negatively buoyant, they just go to the bottom and just hold that person underwater until they die and then just like suck them up and eat so that's the prevailing theory is that these three men were killed by a gooch. That's crazy. Yeah. I had no idea. I wonder if ever thought a catfish was capable of doing a dull look. You should look at photos of the Mekong River catfish because they are massive. Like looking at one man now, river jaws monster catfish. Yeah, that thing is huge. You should put one on as your background, Mike. So Jeff can see it. And then also you share a picture of gooch teeth too. Just sharing my screen. Oh, yeah. That's what I. Yeah. So that's a Mekong River catfish. That could easily swallow, especially a smaller person. And then typing gooch teeth. Mike's computer background is just a frog killing itself. So that far one. That's Jeremy weighed with the gooch. Like that's the one he caught. Oh, yeah. That thing's got a gnarly mouth. Yeah, they got some teeth. Yeah. Well, they're not like, you know, they're not like a catfish you want a noodle for. You guys know what noodleing is, right? Yeah. Where you stick your arm in and the catfish comes and bites it. Exactly. How's that frog doing? Is he falling? William Stieg book called Gorky Rises. Some of our more cultured listeners will probably recognize that. Okay. He's fallen to his death though. All right. One more famous children's books. No, he's flying. All right. He made a little potion. He can float. Don't worry about the frog. He's okay. Okay. So that's the Gooch story. It's kind of an on it's like an unsolved mystery. But everyone seems to agree that it was a Gooch. There is I do think there's a chance it was a bullshark though. But I am, you know, I'm team Gooch. I think it's a Gooch. Yeah, it makes sense of it. I think maybe just like his way of breaking up with her. Just by dying. He just, no, he just held his breath and like went down the river. Yeah. fled the country. What about the other two? That's I don't have a theory for that. Okay. Want a new dad? All right. So we're going to do we're going to do out cheese of getting eaten by a catfish. I guess you're going to need when you're getting killed. To me, it's it's like I don't think the out cheese are that high. Like I'm going to give it a seven. But as far as like psychological horror, like if I get pulled under water by something and I realize it's a massive catfish, it's going to scare me pretty bad. Like I'm really freaked out. Wow, you're dying, you mean? Yeah. Like that to me is worse than being attacked by a shark or a crocodile because it's like. Yeah. It would suck to like see the surface and not be able to like go up. Right. And also be like, oh, this is a catfish. I'm going to be fine and then like realize like I'm not fine. Like it's actually a sea monster. Yeah. Basically. Yeah. I'll go with the six. I might even go lower than no. I feel six is the right place just because. Yeah. The I mean, it's pretty horrifying when you see this thing. We'll post a picture. I'm sure. But on the grand spectrum of animals that we've talked about in ways to die. I don't know. Yeah. I'm going to give it a six just so we got six, six, six, six, six. That's a good reason. I think Wes is right drowning, especially if you can like see the surface. Yeah. Would be pretty horrifying. I would say though, I've always thought a cool way to not to die, but to be used after death would be to like just go be planted out in the middle of the forest or something and let my remains serve as, you know, nutrients for new plant life. Yeah. I wouldn't be, I wouldn't mind being like cooked up and served to some fish. You know, I don't let them have a little bit of me to be honest. I don't care what happens to me after I die. Like Sam, I just want to be like dumped into a river. I just want it to be cheap. I don't want to like people to go broke, trying to bury me in some gilded coffin. Just don't mean or are we going to do the what would Jeff and Mike do? Yeah. We are. Oh cool. I got answered. All right. Okay. Should we just go to the categories then? Yeah. Yeah. Let's go. Well, we're in it, right? We just did out cheese. No, out cheese are more like end of the story, but we'll do. Yeah. Well, we'll launch into categories. What would Jeff and Mike do? So I would put, so it has my foot and I'm like on the bottom of the river. Yeah. I would put my other foot like right on its face. Then with both hands, I just grab its whiskers and just yank it towards me as hard as I can. That was going to be mine. That might work. So those whiskers are hard. Let's go. I'm not going to let go. I'm going to be like you tried to kill me. I'm going to rip these suckers off. Yeah. So what I would do is you know how cats really hate getting pet against the grain of their fur. Yeah. That's what I would do. Pett it the right way. Pett backwards on the fish and it okay. Get real it and it's real and run. Yeah. Right. Laser poignant. So I actually don't really have a good answer for what you do if you're attacked by a Gooch. It seems like there's not much. If it's that big of a Gooch, like it can pull you under water pretty quick. I think Jeff's answer is probably a pretty good one. Like grab them by the barbels and just like pull on them as hard as you can. Is that what they're called? Barbals? Yeah. B-E-E-L-S. Barbels. Barbels. Yeah. I don't have a good answer. If you're swimming in the Callie River in India, the upper Callie River, watch out for Gooch's because a Gooch will get you. Good advice. Yeah. I actually might not put my foot on its head just because you said they don't have scales. So they're just pierced fly me. Yeah. That seems grossed. Well, it might have you by like the middle too. I do think this is an animal that potentially joins our list of animals that could maybe swallow a person whole. Really? I don't know. It seems like that's almost like maybe what happened in these people because they didn't find any remains or anything. So it could be that a really big Gooch. I hate it like a piece by pieces. I don't know. Catfish just like inhale stuff like curvy. Yeah. And get their powers. That's like their same size. Yeah, not if they're like this one was six feet long, but they think there could be one that's like 10 feet long out there. So Jeremy Wade, he claims to have seen one that was like 800 to a thousand pounds when he was like swimming. So there's one that big. It could just inhale a person. Especially like these were kind of smaller dudes. It's a possibility that it did just suck them right in. Well, I mean, even better for me. Why? I would prefer to like I've said I've said this before, but I think if I'm inside the animal, there's a lot of damage. Yeah, that's right where you want to be. Start ripping out hearts and livers and punch them on the inside of the gut. Getting punched in the stomach like normally hurts. Can you imagine it from the inside? You could do a lot more damage than than a water buffalo. If I like bid it on the outside compared to biting it on the inside. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Good point. All right. So yeah, I don't have great advice for people. Probably just the same advice is like if you're around crocodiles, just do your best to stay out of the water unless you know what's in the water. Okay, sex. It sounds like a cool river. Yeah, this is one of those episodes where I came in not thinking there were any more animals that I needed to be afraid of. Yeah. And now there's one more on the couch, dude. Gooch. Yeah, it's also fun to say. So the Gooch stole Christmas in what way? Because I was going to do a Christmas episode and the Gooch stole that because I found the Gooch stole. Okay, so these stole all happen on like Christmas day or something. How the Gooch stole Christmas was by derailing me for my plans. There's no Christmas. Yeah, there's no Christmas. There's not to the episode. The Gooch succeeded the name of the episode. We did we talked about homo alone. All right. Yeah, something completely related to the story. Yeah. Okay. So I also want to ask you guys, we're talking about a catfish. I want you to tell me your favorite animal that has another animal's name in its name. And just to like illustrate what I mean by that, I'll go first. Mine is a whale shark. It's a shark. Oh nice. But it's a whale shark. So I mean, think it alone. That's a good one. Never actually like that name. I hate that name because it always confuses all my friends when we go see whale sharks. They're always like, oh, we saw some whales and it's like, no, we didn't. We saw some sharks. But it's a descriptive, it's a descriptive name. It's like how a catfish. So you think it should be shark whales? No, it's just like people get confused because they're so big, but it's it's just a name. It's descriptive. But whale sharks are my favorite. I'm not saying it's like the best name, but that's my favorite animal that has another animal's name in its name. See, I took it as like what's my favorite name? So I chose sea sea horse. Okay. Because I just think it's a perfect name. I think it's a perfect name for those fish because they do look like horses and like they are just like really funny looking animals to me. I've always wanted to like the name sea horse. I like the animal a lot too. Yeah, they're interesting. A lot more interesting than real horses. My pick is the rhinoceros beetle. Oh yeah. And close second is leopard frog. I think those are sweet. I love leopard frogs. But rhinoceros beetle is the one. Those guys, they're like, yeah, they're like the powerlifting champions of the bug universe. They've pretty seen them. I like that flip over stuff. Yeah, Jeff caught me one once. Like a taxidermied one. Or was that a rhinoceros beetle or a different kind? I tried to buy you a hercules beetle, but it does kind of look like a rhinoceros beetle. I think it was a hercules. They're pretty good at flipping stuff. Yeah, you got to watch out. They could you think they could flip a human over. If one grew to be the size of a Gooch, it could. Oh, yeah, you're right. No, I don't think so. All right. So our next category is how are we messing things up for the Gooch? I misspoke earlier. They are being overfished, but it's the smaller Gooch that are being overfished. Are they overfished? Yeah. And then it's a bad thing. It is. If they're killing people. Yeah, they're important to their ecosystem. Like we don't ever want an animal to I mean, yeah, we take our risk. Never really. We'll get to this in the last herb oil in the last categories, but I just never really like catfish. Okay. That doesn't mean they should be killed though. Anyway, they're being overfished. They also are losing some habitat to like hydroelectric dams and stuff like that. And then also a lot of the a lot of the rivers in India are becoming really polluted. I will say though, like these guys lived far enough upstream. I don't think they really have that problem and their bottom feeders. So they do pretty well in different environments. But I think their main problem right now is overfishing and habitat loss. Why do people fish them? Do they like taste good? Yeah, I think they do. They taste like catfish. You haven't ate a Gooch. You didn't even know that one was. Gooch. A catfish? I mean, a lot of catfish taste different, right? Yeah, that's true. But catfish is okay. So Gooch is probably good too. You know, a big old pile of steaming plate of Gooch. Who doesn't love that? A pile of Gooch. Yeah. Just slide some Gooch on your plate. All right. So our next category is patron questions. Okay. From Jennifer, I probably should have prepped you guys on this one, but we'll see how good you are at thinking on your feet. Okay. Usually not pretty good. Who? And or what is something that has really inspired you in your life? Okay. I can do that one. Well, I don't want to repeat myself, though. I was just going to say steaver win again. Yeah. Let's just all say that one. I'll think of something. No, I'm going to think of something better. Do you guys have anyone that you want to say? Yeah. Who? Steaver. Okay. Okay. You still in mind. Yeah. I'll say David Attenborough. That's a good one. That's a good one. Naturalist that I just like he's like one person that will be really upset when he's gone because I think we all know him as like the voice of all those cool nature documentaries, but he also has done a lot of really cool conservation work and just seems like the most interesting person in the world. And for mall accounts is like a really nice genuine person too. So he's pretty inspiring to me. I really like David Attenborough. I'll pick Bill Bryson. He's my favorite nonfiction writer. He takes things that sound like they would be mundane, but it makes him super interesting. He did like a short history of nearly everything you're at home. And I just find the way he writes to be really inspiring in so far as it makes my little curiosity near on fire in my brain. Okay. He's great. Yeah. I'm going to say Adam from Adam and Eve. All right. Any news? Just seem like a good guy. You know? Yeah. That's all it takes. I mean, it's kind of my I'm related to stream of consciousness. So this one I'm really going to combine to we got hot wheels and Hanna. So they want to know what are all the animals me and you have worked with. So it's mainly going to be you answering that. And also something we were surprised to learn about that animal. Yeah. So Jeff's just worked with me on the black bear project, but he's gotten a little help with owls. He's gotten to come help with owls. But I so I've worked on black bears, grizzly bears, polar bears, sloth bears, golden eagles, kestrels, burrowing owls, flamulated owls, African wild dogs, temic scround pangolin, green sea turtle, eastern hellbender, spotted eagle ray, southern elephant seal, and I'm forgetting someone. Do you say the African wild dog? Argentine tiger. Yeah. I said Argentine tiger, American alligator. Yeah. Those are the main ones. But one thing that I really liked since we talked about African wild dogs a little bit, a really cool thing about them that I'll say is that they're one of another like altruistic animal. So when there's like a injured adult or whatever in the pack, they'll actually feed that injured animal before they eat, which is something that you just like don't see in nature. But they'll actually do that. And they're like, they have a super tight social bond and structure. So they're really what was the other animal that we talked about that's like that? Wasn't it bees that we said were altruistic? Or maybe it was the bats. It was the bats. Yeah. They vomited. They vomited the blood into other bats. Mouths. Yeah. Another interesting thing with the African wild dogs is West rubbed their noses into the other ones buttocks into the bones like each other. Yeah. While there's the data, we rubbed poop all over their faces so that they would like each other. So if you guys want to watch that, you drugged them and rubbed their faces and shit. Just just Google mission wild African wild dogs. Huh. Yeah. Great big story mission wild African wild dogs. Have you not seen those Mike? No. All right. No, I saw one where you were playing on the sunbird. I think I'm gonna make you watch them, I think. Well, I gained my composure here. Okay. So we got Robert wanting to know what our favorite animal penis is. Oh, that's a good question. And he says his is a dragonfly. Anyone know what's special about dragonfly penis? I don't breathe fire, baby. That's what dragons are known for. I'm just gonna say blue whales because that's like bigger than a person. The biggest. Mine's walrus because it's the biggest in relation to their size, I think. What? And that's what I've heard at least it's the it's the biggest that has an actual bone in it. Oh, that's a good fat to know. Ducks. Ducks are like a corkscrew twisty one. Yeah. Yeah. That's cool. I think we're good. Yeah. Cool. Cool question. The people want to know. Yeah. For Megan, what's the weirdest thing you've ever eaten? When I was in Guatemala, they just like boiled pure fat or cow fat. And there's like no meat. And that is like the worst thing I've ever eaten. I had a at a hot pot restaurant in Taiwan. They had little cubes of congealed pig blood. And they actually weren't bad, but it's still a weird thing to have eaten. Yeah. So that'll be my answer. I you know what? I mean a lot of weird shit, but like probably the weirdest is just when I was in good answer. Yeah. When I was in third grade, I got into a real bug eating phase and was just eating bugs like all the time like hundreds of bugs a day. And that's not an exaggeration. What? And why remember once my hundred once my dad once my dad's like smushed a spider and I licked it off the floor. Are you serious? I'm not joking. What the hell is going on around here? Yeah. And then and then my friend who was eating some bugs too, but not nearly the amount is me. He got hives for meeting bugs. And he had to tell his parents that he had been eating bugs. And there was no more bug eating. Not 100 hundreds of bugs daily. I mean, there's a lot of bugs. Where are you getting them? I've catch them. I'm not in there, but like dinner. And they're like, what? You got to eat dinner? He's like, Oh, I already ate. Yeah, full of bugs. I went to the park. I went to the park for an hour. Bugs are a good source of protein. We should be eating more bugs. Yeah, like there's nothing wrong with eating bugs. It's just gross when you're eating them. Maybe you would do pretty good on that show alone. Yeah, I'm always whenever I watch that show, I'm like, Why aren't they just eating bugs all the time? Did you ever see the movie Snowpiercer? Yeah, I love Snowpiercer. Bong Joon Ho's movie. Yeah, isn't that the red little bricks of stuff? Yeah, that's made out of cockroaches. It's Crouchard Croaches. Cockroaches are gross. That's where you draw the line? Probably in third grade I would have been a cockroach. You'll lick a spider off of the floor, but yeah, hang on. I know, dude. All right, and then from Rebecca? That's so weird. I feel like we're not focusing on how enough on how weird that is. That's really, really. I know. I was an obsessive kid. I'm sorry. Whatever. All right. I don't, I think this podcast might have just ended. This is... Did you have a favorite? Grasshoppers. The grossest one ever, it was a butterfly because it's wings stuck to the roof of my mouth. It was like you, you know when you like cinnamon and it makes people cough, that's what a butterfly was like. You know what's funny is I remember like, you would always get those suckers from Mexico that had a bug in the middle like a grasshopper or something. And you were like the cooler older brother. So I was always like, oh, I gotta get one of those suckers. And then I ate one and it's like in the end, I just ate like a bug in a sunt. It's just like why has he been eating so many of these suckers with bugs, isn't it? I don't eat bugs anymore. But it was like a good, it was like a two-week obsession where I just ate tons of those. All right. All right. From Rebecca, which would be worse? A hippo with things in venom like a cobra or a couple of wolves with jaws and teeth like a crocodile? I think the wolves are worse because a hippo, it's like, if you get eaten by, if you get bitten by a hippo, it doesn't matter if it's venomous or not. But by that same logic, the hippo is worse regardless, right? Right. I'd rather have wolves. Yeah. I could fight off a couple wolves before one hippo. I think the wolves are a bigger upgrade though than the hippo getting venom. True. Yeah. All right. That's it. Those are some good creative questions. Thanks, guys. All right. So our last category for the Goonch is how much do we like this animal? Let's give it some claws. Wait. Did we do pop culture? Oh no, we haven't. You're right. All right. So we're going to do our favorite pop culture catfishes. I'll go first. All right. Go for it, Jeff. So I bent the rule a little bit and I went with a coy. Okay. And it's the office when Michael falls in a coy pond at a restaurant. Oh, yeah. I remember that one. Yeah. And then my other one was magic carp, the Pokemon. And that's more of a carp, I think. Uh-huh. But it like really sucks when you have a magic carp as you poke him on. And they're really bad. And then it's just like for some reason he evolves into a like huge sweet dragon. That is cool. I'm just going to have to take your word on that one. They do have the little barbels. I get, I mean, yeah. Some, some carcasses too. Yeah. Mike, I see that you've got an anime catfish. Is that your favorite catfish? No. What's your name? It's a good one though. It's Sanji. He's he's braiding the barbels of a catfish. That's pretty funny. Yeah, that is. My favorite catfish is a mantiteo. Getting catfished by that dude when he was in college. Do you want to explain what that happened with that catfishing story? I'm going to need Jeff's assistance because I'm going to miss some incredible details. It's really bizarre. So a college football player in the United States, he played at Notre Dame. He had a girlfriend or so he thought there was a huge national news because he was like player of the year. One of the best linebackers we'd ever seen in college. Well, he was like at the Heisman and made it about his girlfriend. Right. Which is died. That died. He's or so he thought. And then pretty quickly there after the story unraveled on a national stage. And it was by far the most embarrassing thing I think that's ever happened to a collegiate athlete. Probably I can't think of anything that even comes close because the girl who he thought was his girlfriend who he had never met or even spoken to over the phone who he made just sound like the biggest deal in most devastating loss he'd ever go through. It was this like I can't state strongly enough how big of a news story this was and how tragic it was for this player. Ironman. How much he was celebrated for playing through all this of adversity. And then like three days afterwards it turned out everything was fake. And this guy who was like into deep and like killed or off. Yeah, tried to end the relationship by dying. He really got it. Oh, so it's like the most famous time in Manthaya's life and he used as a platform to like talk about his girlfriend that died. Yeah, it's really sad. Yeah. Funny enough, I also picked like a cat fishing story. All right. So mine was one that I remember from the news a long time ago is this 19 year old woman in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. And she lived with her aunt and her aunt like really hated that she was meeting guys on Facebook and like bringing them over to her house. So she forced the niece to like shut down Facebook and like wasn't letting her do that anymore. So the niece blocked her aunt on Facebook so that she could keep doing it. And the aunt to get her back started a fake account on Facebook and the name of the fake account was it was hold up. A tray top dog Ellis was the name of the fake account. And it was like this like you know tough looking dude and he added the niece tray top dog Ellis added the niece and they like formed a relationship. And then after like a long time of them talking and flirting and everything she asked him to kill her aunt. So she like what? The niece said that she should the Ellis should come over shoot and kill her aunt and then also kill her fiance and her cousin and the family dog. So she like what? She told this guy to do it but the guy was really her aunt. Actually the aunt. Yeah. And so the aunt turned her into the police and she went to jail. Wow. Yeah. It's a crazy one. Yeah. Oh yeah. You know it's crazy is like the dude who does the show catfish and like made the document. He's yeah. That like got catfished. Yeah. He did. Yeah. I didn't agree about that. He was like how it started. Dude. Oh. It was like a documentary about him called catfish. And like these people thought your girlfriend doesn't seem real. So he went to meet her and is like some like 50 year old woman. But it's like kind of like I don't know. I just feel like people who get catfished are just like very goalable or something like. Not all of them. Not video chat. Someone within like a year of dating them. I yeah I agree when it goes on for that long. But like I know some people that are pretty smart that have gotten catfished. But I don't know. It just happens. Just seems like he got super lucky that like he's turned it into a career. Oh yeah. Just like really dumb mistake. Well he like coined the term catfish. Like that's where it came from. Why is it catfish? I can't remember. It says in the documentary. Yeah. A fishing attack is kind of the same thing in the information security world. So I don't know where the cat part comes from but I'm sure there's some route. Do you know where the fish come from? I didn't know what you're going to. Yeah it's kind of just like fishing. They call it fishing for personal information. It's just like a. Anyway a term. Okay. Well let's go ahead and rate the the Gooch. How much do we like this animal? How many claws? I'm going to give the Gooch three claws. Not a big Gooch fan. I don't really care for him. So it gets three claws for me. Sorry. I'm going to give it two. Yeah. I think I might go with. I'll go with three. Just for the fact that it's super interesting that they can get so huge. Yeah. I'm teeth and stuff are cool. And also the fact that I didn't know that they exist until today. And so they're just kind of like a curiosity. But tomorrow probably I'll say they're two. Yeah. I've never been. I really don't like catfish. Me neither. I just never really liked them. So. I'm going to rank it 6,700. I don't think there's that one expected. There might be. I was going to guess somewhere in the 6,700 range. Well thanks guys. And yeah, I think thanks to all you patrons for being here. And just so you know, you're the only ones getting episodes right now. We're taking a little break from the main feed. So I bet you're happy. You're patrons. We're happy. You're funny. Wes is like, I think I might want like a little break from doing episodes and then he's like, I'll do the Patreon episode. Yeah. I know. Maddicted to Gouche. He's addicted to he can't quit you guys. Yeah. Anyways, thanks guys. Thanks so much for all your encouragement for everything you guys do for us. We really do appreciate it. And happy holidays, huh? Yeah. I agree. Yeah. Man, this is probably coming out on Christmas Eve. So if you celebrate Christmas, Merry Christmas. If not, to happy whatever else. All right. See you guys. Bye. See you.