A Sierra Foothills Murder Mystery

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Younger brother, Jeff Larson. I'm not on any boards for bears, but I am four boards with bears. You're on four boards with that mic. Mike's just hanging out. I have built a bear. You guys ever do that? Did you go on a date to do it? No. I had to go check it out solo before I took a date there. I did it one time on a date and was not impressed. Really? They didn't even have a baseline bear that we could use. We had to do a Harry Potter theme bear. What? That's too bad. I can't think of a more depressing place to go solo. Then build a bear. I like to go to the movies alone a lot, but that's a step too far. I really like the ambiance when I'm on my phone. Did you do the voice memo to yourself? I love you, but it's too yourself. If anyone has a reason, it's ox. If anyone hasn't picked up on the joke, I didn't actually go to build a bear alone. I guess clear my name of that accusation. You got to do that a lot lately. I was really mean to the person helping me. That's what you say. You have been so mean. It's like, no, I don't want to frack and tie on my bear. You got kicked out of build a bear. Your website shows green shirts. Well, I've never been there. I don't think I ever will. I can't see Jesse ever wanting to go to build a bear. So yeah. That's a weird one to draw like a hard line in the sand for her, but like that's fine. I just I don't skin off. She just maybe doesn't do stuff to animals. She doesn't do stuff to animals. And yeah, it just doesn't seem like something she'd want to do. Okay. You know, teach their own Mike. Yeah. I'd let her speak for herself, but that's just me. You can do. I, but I mean, I've been with there for seven years. I know her personality pretty well. If Jesse, if I were to walk in and Jesse were to say, hey, I really want to go to build a bear, I would, I would be like, Hey, are you okay? Or like, is something wrong with you? Well, welcome back to the podcast. Everyone Jeff already said that, but I'm saying it too. We I got a doozy. And I was you said it for us today. Lama gravitas. Seem more genuine mind. Seem more like I just try and get the ball roll and food. They started it. What's really is like glad to welcome everyone back now. We'll get a text from mom saying, I think West should start introducing the episodes. All right. Anyway, we got a good episode today. It is an animal that I really like talking about. And I'm not going to spoil what it is. We're going to go through some of the story beats. I want people to kind of guess in their own heads, what it might be. I think our keener listeners will get it pretty quickly. I think you guys will probably get it pretty quickly. But as I researched this one, it kind of felt like a murder mystery. And so I wanted to kind of treat it that way. Oh, so there is a death in this one. Just a warning. And it's a it's a great story. So whenever you guys are ready, I'm ready to start. Murder mystery. Yeah. It was born ready. Okay. All right. Well, Barbara Schoener woke up early on the morning of April 23rd, 1994. This was roughly 10 months after the iconic notes of John Williams theme for Jurassic Park first played in darkened theaters across the country. She started to get ready to leave her house. Put some time right time frame there. I think no one we're talking about. She started to get ready to leave her house in Placerville, California, which is a small mountain town located in between Sacramento Lake Tahoe. Jeff, we have a close friend from Placerville, Cassie LeCont lives there lived there. And this is pretty much where Jackie was from my college girlfriend too. LeCont. That means the count in French might be a might be a Dracula. Yeah, very well could be a drag. What do they call the vampire vampire? Nos faratou. There's a reason Barbara was waking up so early. This 40 year old woman was a long distance runner and she wanted to get her run in for the day. In fact, she'd actually recently graduated from just long distance running into ultra running and she's training for her next race. Do I there you guys really know what what ultra running is? I was on the podcast with some listeners that do a diss like it's called man, I gotta give them the proper shout out. Distance to my brother is super big into it. He does like the marathon day, sobler or whatever. The podcast was distanced to empty and they asked me some hypotheticals about what they should do if they encounter animals on the trails. Yeah, and I told them what you would have said with. Think you know, just if it's a bear, don't turn around and tell you see what color it is. Definitely not what I would say. Yeah, you know, we've talked about this a lot, but runners are often slightly higher risk when you're talking about certain animals. Because they're moving fast ultra ones because they're like in the wilderness run. Right. There's spending a lot of time moving through mountainous country places to have more animals. They're moving fast, they can trigger that prey drive in animals, but Barbara was getting into ultra running and ultra running is usually like 50 K or more. So 50 kilometers or more are considered ultra runs. You're going very long distances and she's really excited about it. She's training for her next race. So as she's moving through her family house early in the morning of April 23rd, 1994, she's doing her best not to wake wake up her husband Pete or her two kids who are five and eight. She puts on her purple running shorts, a purple sweatshirt and laces up her white nighties. And she thought about the night before at her son Andrews, literally gain. She'd been talking to her husband Pete about a morning run to train for this next race. Pete's also an ultra runner. And he suggested they go to one of their favorite spots, which was called the Auburn Lake trails near the community of cool California, which cool is a neat name for a little community. All right, Pete and Barb had met roughly 10 years previously. And Barb was giggly, vivacious, and she was the perfect Yen to Pete's more reserved and quiet Yang. They dated for about five months before getting married and after about 10 years, they were just as in love as they'd ever been. So this is one of those couples that you know, they just don't get tired of each other. You can just tell they really enjoy each other's companies. They have similar interests. They just really like being around each other. So Pete's not only deeply in love with his wife Barbara, but he's also a bit protective. He liked the idea of her doing her long run at a place that was thought to be incredibly safe. And Auburn Lake like trails was incredibly safe. You had to pass through a mandate to get to the trailhead. You needed to have an invitation from one of the local residents to access these trails, which Barbara had. And with that level of security, Pete wasn't worried about her being harassed or assaulted by anyone during her long run. You might wonder why anyone would want to. You know, you have these people out there that just are violent people or are deviance or whatever else. But also Barbara worked for insurance company and part of her job was kind of like making people that were collecting unemployment for too long, find new work. And often people would get pretty upset about that. So she had people that really didn't like her out there in the world. Yeah. Even though she's a very sweet person. Yeah, she's kind of a snitch though. And maybe a little bit of a snitch. Yeah. And what do snitches get, Jeff? Stitchy. Yep. Barbara pulled her fleet feet visor down over her short brown hair and got into her dodge and trepid. She drove to the quiet. She drove from the quiet town of the most. The more you describe her, the more she's starting to sound like grimace to me. Yeah. We're in all purple. Dodge and trepid. Yeah. That's what grimace drives, right? Yeah. I mean, I doubt he drives like a standard vehicle. I think it'd be like a shoe that's made like a car sometimes. That's pretty much a dodgin. Pretty much a dodgin trepid. All right. She drives from the quiet town of Placerville to the even quieter community of cool and the Auburn Lake trails. Takes her about 30 minutes to get to the manate where she says the name of her friend, the attendant lets her in. And then she parks at spot number three near the trail head, gets out of her car, slipped on some thin gloves over her hands and her pink fingernails, stretches, and then starts her run at about 8 a.m. Later that day, her husband Pete was starting to get really worried. Barbara left that morning, should have been back hours ago. His worry turned into a deeper anxiety, so he loads his kids into the car and they drive to the Auburn Lake trails. And there, his anxiety turns into full-blown fear, because her car is still parked at the trail head, but no one had seen or heard from her for the better part of the day. He immediately starts praying that maybe she had just sprained an ankle or something else had happened that was minor, but his mind is also drifting to the worst-case scenario that maybe some random, you know, stalker or terrible person had hurt, abducted or even killed his wife on this trail. If I were Pete, I would be praying that she were okay. I wouldn't be like, I hope she has a sprained ankle. I just be like, I hope she's all the way safe and healthy. Sure. I would pray. Yeah. But I do, I'm kind of a demand a lot out of God. But you need some type of reason that she wasn't back. She's cheating on me. That's what I was thinking. You'd rather cheat on me. That's what I was trying to do. Yeah, I think it was a sprained ankle. The sprained ankle's hurt, dude. Are you kidding me? Ouch. I mean, that was a bit of an artistic liberty that I said what he was praying about, but, uh, God. Yeah. You know, maybe he was praying that she was cheating on me. Should have thought of that way. Yeah, I should have. He was praying with just cheating on him. When Jesse's a few hours late, I'm like, she'd better be out there cheating on me. If you would said it like he was praying she was cheating on him or something, like there's no way me and Mike would have stopped you to question that. Yeah. Yeah. We would have let that go if John and interrupt it then. Perfect. All right. So Pete acts quickly in very little time. Dozens of volunteer searchers and law enforcement officials, the professional search and rescue are looking and calling for Barbara. They searched that evening and the entire night, but by morning, no one had found a single piece of evidence in the disappearance. There's knowing glances between searchers, conveying a truth that's becoming more and more clear to everyone, but something really terrible had probably happened to Barbara Schoener. So around 7 a.m. that morning, three of Barbara and Pete's friends were also ultra runners showed up to the scene. These men were resprovard, Kurt Fox and Ernie Flores. Because they're runners, they're helping Barbara. Yeah. Well, you're about to hear a lot about them. Well, I guess not a lot. You just did, dude. Yeah. Yeah. You literally just heard about them. You guys are both just lying all over the place. When did I lie? You said she was praying. She had a sprained ankle and you're like, why have you just made that up? I mean, he probably was. Ask me, ask me what their names are. Ask me what their three names are. What are their three names, Jeff? I don't know. He's got a point that doesn't mean you haven't heard of me. You just can't remember hearing about it. All right. So they're helping her train for next race. They figured if anyone could find her on these trails, it was them because they'd all run these trails a lot. They knew them really well and they kind of knew how runners think, like which trails she might take, where she might go. So as they get near this makeshift camp, where the search party had been established, they're told by the volunteers there in these orange vests that search and rescue had everything under control. They didn't really need anyone extra on the trails. So they weren't currently needed. But when these volunteers turn their backs, these three men duck under the yellow crime scene tape and they run up the trail. The morning's foggy and damp. They run up these different trails. They're yelling from around me in the cop that I cast a chase them chase them their old runners. Get like four or six. It's like what do those big old cops do that just like but like so determined drops is they don't know. I was thinking hard attack. They have those tables set up like rest stations. The cops would just be like coffee and donuts to like for free fuel at and keep running. Someone get those guys. All right. We looked at city cars and quietly disagreed with the formula. Quietly we added more space. Quietly we upgraded the tech but kept the price honest. The all new MG4 EV urban from just £239 a month with 0% APR. MG motor financial services 2,300 pounds deposit over 49 months 7,223 pounds optional final payment. Off end March 2026 conditions apply visit mg.co.uk Okay so they're running up these different trails. It's foggy and damp. They're stopping the pier over the steep edges of these trails. They can hear helicopters worrying above the clouds. They can see tracks from the horses and the people that have been used in this search. And they're continuing to look for Barbara and they're also starting to kind of accept that she'd probably been either abducted or killed. Then something catches a ducted or killed. Yeah right. Is that what you meant? No but it's possible. You know. It's a duct. Yeah duct. Yeah that is a type of abduction. Like you think you'd find your body if it's not like I'm just pulling out there maybe. Well there's plenty of people that abduct people too Jeff and they often don't find those bodies too. Not ultra run you say maybe. You know if you just anyway we'll get there. Jeff's doing a good job. You presented this as a mystery. He's just poking holes. Aliens are definitely one of the things on the list of suspects. Yes of course. I mean it sounds to me like those people you're saying that go missing and they don't ever find them. You're attributing that to people taking them and it could have been all of those could have been aliens if they could have never find without it. Yeah that a doubt. I'm not saying we're wrong. That to me. We're not disagreeing. Yeah. Is if we abducted an alien by the logic of how we label alien abductions we would call that a human abduction but no one would understand if you said that they'd be like a human got abducted. It'd be confusing. It would be confusing right. They call it a human abduction or would we call it a human abduction? We would say it would. They would make a sound unheard of by the years of men. Yeah that's true. Unless they're that like little rock spider in Project Hail Mary. Rocky. All right. As they're looking for Barbara something catches Russ's eye and he stops to call the other man. He's looking down a steep slope. It's covered in oak trees, some brush and about 50 feet below he could see something white laying out in the open. Staring a little harder he realized what he was looking at. It was a visor. The visor could have easily been trashed that was left in the area over the winter so the men walk slowly along the trail back and forth to see if anything else caught their eye if anything else looked out a place. And as they get to abandon the trail still inside of this visor they see two big disturbances in the dirt on the side of the trail like someone had kind of run off the side of the trail there and down the slope. It still isn't like a ton to go off of but the marks in the dirt convince Russ that he should at least go down the steep slope, brave this poison oak that's everywhere and at least check out the visor. So he carefully climbs 50 or so feet down to the visor and when he picks up this white foam visor he immediately notices thin reddish stains all over the hat. And of course his mind immediately goes to whether or not these are blood stains. But as he looks down at his feet and all around the mud that's on his shoes and all around is kind of reddish and so he thinks this could easily just be mud that had been on this visor that dried and he kind of talks himself out of thinking that this is barbos. Plus searchers had already scanned this area pretty intensely and he was pretty sure that they would have seen this hat but he still just can't shake a weird feeling. So Kurt is up above he's yelling down at Russ he's just saying hey leave the hat it's nothing let's go look some more. Russ just just about to do that when something else catches his eye and it makes his blood run cold. Laying not far from where he'd found this hat is a water bottle laying in the leaves. It's kind of a cheap and light water bottle that had an elastic strap on it for a hand and it's the kind that's almost always used by runners at the time. So Kurt is now convinced that Barbara had been attacked and that he was close to the site where it happened. So he starts looking around more he wasn't sure if his eyes were playing tricks on him or not but now that he's looking really hard it looked as though he could see the faintest trail and the dead leaves like something large had been dragged through these leaves. He follows this trail he's carefully stepping around the poison oak and the other two men slide down the slope they start crashing through the brush trying to keep up with them and Russ had actually disappeared from their view but suddenly his panic voice cuts through the air and he says oh my god oh my god oh my god she's right here. Ernie and Kurt pushed through the brush until they were standing next to Russ and all three men were looking at the pale white calves and the running shoes of Barbara Schoner sticking out of a thin pile of brush and dirt. Her dirty brown hair was visible on the other side of this pile. Ernie bends down to touch her skin to see if she might still be alive. Skin was cold to the touch he immediately knew that his friend was dead and that her murderer had buried her in a shallow grave and then left. So these guys quickly talk and Russ and Kurt decide they're gonna run and tell officials that they had found Barbara and that Ernie would stay with the body. He was an EMT so they figured just in case maybe she possibly is alive you should stay with the body we'll run and get help. I feel like you could set a personal best run time with that situation you know. Yeah yeah you can go really fast for sure. That'd be a real tough moment where I just I've always imagined not always but a lot of times I just think if like someone really close to me and I was the first responder and I had to be the one responsible to telling their next of kin like that would be I just can't imagine how hard that would be. Yeah well the thing that's crazy for me about this next part is that they're in like the woods it's dark it's cold and like Ernie just has to sit with the dead body of his friend that was maybe like viciously murdered and he has to just sit there in the quiet with it. Yeah imagine trying to tell him when you're completely out of breath too. Yeah that'd be a real We found you dead wait what would you say? If you guys discovered me since there were two people that are more than one person that the fount was like on this crime scene right. Yeah how would you decide who of the two of you if you found me together like my dead body who had to like tell my dad which is do it together. Yeah I don't know. Smash bet. I feel like you'd dad would take it all right. Yeah smash bet. Yeah smash it. I'm not I wouldn't be like scared I would just we emotionally upset. If we did a smash bet we'd have to like put in a weird one too like we have a cameo of Mark McGrath telling your dad that'd be a good way. Yeah in fact that's way that's how I want you guys to do it. Yeah never mind. I do just take a picture of you and send it to him with no like to exterior need that. Or the or the school emoji. Maybe our the Instagram tooth and cloth fan account we could announce the message through them through one of those videos. Yeah yeah great. You like us enough to do this do us a solid here right please let Mike's dad know that he died violently. All right so Ernie's left behind he hears the sounds of his friends running away scrambling up the trail as they fade into the distance and suddenly the forest all around Ernie and Barb's bodies gets very quiet. He slows his breathing to listen to his surroundings just in case the man that had killed his friend was still around and a few minutes later he hears a soft noise in the brush behind him kind of like the sound of a carefully placed foot thinking that he might be about to get the chance to avenge his friend he spins around toward the noise but sees nothing that the hairs on his neck are standing up and suddenly he realized that the feeling of being watched wasn't just an old wives tale it's something that actually happens. Someone was out there in the brush and he could feel them watching him so he sat there as quietly as possible until around about 15 minutes later he hears approaching footsteps and he sees uniformed officials from the homicide department descending the slope. Ernie's then escorted back to the certain rescue camp where he rejoins curtain rust and the three men told they were being detained that they would be interrogated after the initial analysis of the crime scene which I guess makes sense like if if people have been looking for like 24 hours and they find nothing and then you immediately go up and find the body they're probably going to want to ask you some questions for sure yeah meanwhile homicide investigators were removing the five inches of natural debris from Barbara's body stick by stick and leaf by leaf after a while they'd exposed one of her arms which looked as though had been pulled behind her with the palm up kind of like it had been tied as they continued to pull debris from her body they discovered a massive wound below her left shoulder that revealed missing portions of her lungs stomach, soft-eggous kidneys liver, pancreas and spleen and they realized they were either looking at one of the more brutal possibly cannibalistic murders they had ever seen or something else altogether something inhuman yes maybe which would make sense for the our podcast something unearthly they moved to her head and carefully lifting it they found that she had knife-like cuts all over her neck large puncture wounds in her head and into her skull and that her entire face had mostly been removed oh wow they also found tawny hairs mixed into her hair and all over her body and one of the investigators radioed down to the tent where rust, urny and curt were being held and told the officer that the men could be released this was no murder, mountain lion had killed barber shoner and it was the first fatality in the state of california since 1909 wow man alright so we've talked to fair amount a fair amount about mountain lions even in california the history of their conservation in the state and if you want to refresh her on that go back to our our episode this last February um that's titled the california cougar kidnapper so that really goes over a lot of information about california mountain lions but i want to highlight a few of the key points to their biology because it's been a minute and their history of conflict in the state and in north america at large alright first of all technically mountain lions are not considered big cats and technically is doing a lot of lifting there because that's mostly based on their taxonomy and some more philogical differences from the other big cats like not being able to roar their closest relatives are actually the juggle rundi which is something that we possibly saw in brazil at night and the cita which i didn't know that was news to me that cita's are actually pretty closely related to mountain lions uh and those two cats are also technically not considered big cats but for me that term subjective it's more related to size than anything else since mountain lions are slightly bigger than on average than leopards which are a big cat and they can kill prey as big as bull elk i definitely count them as a big cat and i would definitely count cita's as well how about you guys i draw the line in jida yeah cita's my smallest big cat i'm with you there yeah who are these guys what do you mean technically it's not a big cat so some cat researchers and biologists think that you need to have forget the exact name of the anatomy but it's a certain modification in their throat that allows cats to roar yeah and when you have that you're considered a big cat and so it's like just pretty much just the genus pantera that are considered the big cats for those biologists for me and for a lot of people it's just a size thing because it's big cat you know like if you kill a bull elk you're a big cat yeah if only there's something else we could use to like describe roaring cats yeah one of the cats that can roar but if we could use like a word for those type of cats like yeah like loud cats that would be louding cats or something like that roaring roaring cats oh there we go yeah you think Katy Perry could take down a bull elk because she can roar yeah but that's only like one of the criteria i think she could probably just annoy one to death you know whoa oh shot fired it Katy should get to have a gun yeah then she probably still can't wow jeez hey you are I know what's this all about I'll be honest who do you like man I like just because she went to outer space before you did I love Carly Rajasin I like Olivia Rodrigo I like um Billy yeah I like Billy Eilish I love Billy yeah jeez the one that married the alligator guy I like Hillary Duff we're friends um now that's Lana Del Rey uh you like I'm not a big not not a big fan of her but I don't dislike her oh my god I just don't really care yeah that's fair then in California on average males are gonna be around seven and a half feet long including their tail length they weigh up to 170 pounds females will be around six feet long including their tails and can weigh up to around 120 pounds and to me they're kind of the perfect big cat and the reason I say that is I think our other big cats are all kind of good at one thing and mountain lions are good at a lot like they climb trees they're ambush predators from trees they're really fast on the ground they're super agile they're really adept at killing prey they kind of just do everything we think of when it comes to big cats really well they have incredibly sharp protectile claws that extend when the muscles and their forelegs contract and that's something we learned early on in this podcast that they're not like that's not a mental thing that they're doing extending their claws that's a whole grain of physiological thing that's happening as they're running or grabbing prey or whatever else it's cool yeah it's really cool those claws give them both traction to run and to help them grip prey uh and then I just wanted to read this short paragraph from the mountain line foundation on how they often kill their prey we've talked about this before but they word it really well so I just wanted to kind of say how they do it prey is normally killed with a bite to the back of the neck the base of the skull do you guys remember what happens next with mountain lions it's like one of my favorite ways that something kills prey that they put the big tooth in between their vertebrae and paralyze yeah or just kill them the large canines are inserted between the vertebrae like a wedge orcing the vertebrae apart and breaking the spinal cord the speed it with the with which this takes place indicates that the concentration of nerves in its canines allow the cat to feel its way into the vertebrae in a fraction of a second in the case of larger prey such as elk the neck may be broken by pulling the head down and back breaking it directly or in a fall which is something I just learned about them is that they use the gravity sometimes of them like hitting the prey and whipping the head forward and then they shift their weight to actually just like use that animal's momentum to break its own neck which is really really cool oh man can you imagine that Jeff can you imagine dying what do you think happens after we die Jeff do you want a real answer yeah yeah sure you're real answer I I think we're just done think we're gotten we're finished and I think it makes I think we go on at all I think sounds kind of nice sometimes yeah that's where I think either way it's equally as scary I couldn't think of like a situation where I want it well we don't do that let's get into this this is a great place to talk about this in the middle of an episode talking about how mountain outlines kill things right all right if this fails the cougar may grasp the throat crushing the windpipe can you imagine that Jeff just to test necessitates death through his fixation and takes longer exposing the cougar to possible injury don't you imagine a fixation yeah yeah you've been choked with or he's done plenty of that it's surprisingly effective depending on what you're going for if you go into Jeff's closet right now you'll see a bell hanging up there that you know what that's for why is that belt hole so close to the buckle that's weird the efficiency of the kill will vary depending on prey size cougar size angle of attack in other circumstances and a quick aside I forgot to mention this earlier cougar mountain line puma cat amount these are all the same animal panther sometimes people call them panthers we're talking about the same antler panther can be a lot of different cats but cougar mountain line are the two ones we usually use in North America puma is used Mexico south pretty much okay to me the way they kill their prey is one of the cooler things about them it's also probably one of the main reasons that a lot of people seem to have a pretty intense fear of mountain lions as I've talked to people throughout my years as biologist and talk to them about bears I find that almost everyone says I'm not really worried about bears but I do get really creeped out by mountain lions which I always thought was kind of interesting because bears attack a lot more people than mountain lions do okay a few more facts about mountain lions they've been measured to jump 45 feet horizontally and 15 feet vertically it's pretty crazy that's a lot more feet than I can jump Jeff 45 feet horizontally is pretty much a school bus I think the only time I really tried long jump what was I getting to Mike like 18 feet you're a little over it I was surprised that's like not a terrible jump for someone who was like not in shape to well like at least not training to do that I was like whoa over 18 feet died it as a compliment what's your personal best my best was 22 11 I believe okay you know double what you were jumping which is crazy to think about like it's the length of the school bus I bet you they could jump you can imagine that further higher if they got like really scared to you know how they're not scared they just jump so high yeah they have roughly 287 degrees of visual field I put that in perspective we have about 200 so they can see further behind them than we can a little bit based on the rods cones in their eyes it's thought that they probably can't detect a lot of color until they're closer to objects but their low-life visibility is much better than ours even when they can see color it's probably just a few different shades they don't have a lot of color vision all right you guys maybe yeah a lot of grace different shades because I've ever heard a Merkel sells Merkel I have cat or no I'm thinking sickle cell that's different that's bad maybe you're thinking of Steve Irkall instead of Merkel and it's what I thought did I do that remember that yeah I remember that that was good that was good Mike that's good enough yeah say the line uh I already did I'm not saying it again basically yeah I think he's still alive that's like a provisional one though like eventually you will have died and then someone listen to this episode and everyone's gonna be like who all right basically these Merkel cells are cells in your skin that are responsible for detecting light touch so if you guys were to ever feel a tiny bug crawling on your skin or if either of you ever experienced the delicate touch of a lover you're gonna be using those Merkel cells that's gonna be what you're using to feel that is it named after Megan Merkel possibly but I doubt her light touch you know that's gonna get that print what one prints going yeah those I started watching suits I see it now when she got married to him I was kind of like I don't know but when I started watching suits as like damn yeah if you're listening you got Jeff's damn approval mount line whiskers and a lot of them a million whiskers uh which are also commonly called by brisay are absolutely packed with these Merkel cells and it makes them ultra sensitive receptors that they can use to navigate their world so how that works is there's these tight clusters of nerve endings at the base of each whisker and they can detect changes to airflow and their surroundings which can indicate nearby objects or prey um they're so sensitive that they don't need to make physical contact with an object to see it so people think that maybe these whiskers are so sensitive that if the wind is blowing toward a mount line and then suddenly it just shifts ever so much they know that there's some kind of animal moving through that wind and they can detect it well they can see they also have um vibrisay on their wrists that sense movement close to the ground and help them position their paw perfectly so it makes no noise and according to a 1979 study on behaviors of both domestic and wild cats their facial whiskers may help them orient their bite as it captures and kills prey so they use their whiskers for like really fine scale movement and whatnot around the world mount lines chirp shriek growl and per but they don't roar they live in almost every ecosystem in north and south america with the only exceptions really being aquatic ecosystems and the far northern Arctic they're the most widespread land mammal in the Americas which is kind of cool yeah that was interesting how fast can they run what's your guess 52 44 if we're doing prices right rules Jeff wins if we're doing normal rules Mike wins now we're doing prices right we always are about 50 miles per hour so very close dog on it cubs are born spotted with blue eyes they're very cute what's your guys favorite two favorite names for mount lions that's screeching devil wasn't that one i like that one i think that's one okay i like puma because their scientific name is puma con color and i feel like every other country they're found in they call them pumas and i just like the way it sounds and then i like mountain lion too i like mountain lion more than cougar cougar is cool except cougars think of older women now so i feel like that the best only makes it cooler right they're cool yeah it kind of makes me think of byu too which just feels kind of tame but mountain lion is just so descriptive it sounds like a fantasy animal you know this is my high school mask got for a couple of years while i was living in Nevada yeah yeah in california there's you guys know about that is a great fact yeah in california they've killed seven people since 1890 and 29 total fatalities have been attributed to mountain lion since 1868 throughout all of north america that's canada in the united states 29 so interesting to me that your cohort of bear biologist friends are creeped out by do you think that's just a question of them being more familiar with bears and how to deal with them what this isn't bear biologist i'm just talking about random people that come up to me and say like what should i do if i see a bear and i'll tell them and it'll be like yeah i'm not that afraid of bears but i'm afraid of mountain lions i feel like the common person is just afraid of mountain lions often they shouldn't be would you be more afraid of michael mires or a freddy crewgrip my probably freddy right but michael mires actually kills more people you think that's true you're really you were hoping your confidence would carry you through that one but i knew that right way either answer you chose i had to defend the other guy yeah you would have been so good and to be basically though looking at those statistics if it's about one fatality every five years which is a really low fatality rate that's large cats yeah it's nothing honestly i think maybe the only other big cat by our qualifications that kills less would be cheetahs and snow leopards jaguars don't kill out of the no but i think they kill more than one every five years but i'm not sure it's probably they're probably pretty close to jaguars there's thought to be about 40 or more fatal leopard attacks just in india every single year so there's more in one year in india than there has been the entire pretty much history of north america but per person that lives in india and per person that lives in america it's probably about a even so like 10 billion people in india there's there's a huge difference you know socio economically all of that but i don't think that accounts for this because like if you go back to this will attack people more yeah and if you go back to the late 1800s the differences weren't that grand and like technology was about the same and you did still didn't see a ton of mountain line attacks and there was still a lot of leopard attacks so i think really the big difference here is natural behavior when it comes to interacting with humans and my guess again is this is mostly because like the jaguar mountain lion spent most of their evolution essentially separated from human beings and when they finally did encounter human beings when people finally came across the land bridge 20 thousand years ago they already had technology that would allow them to kill mountain lions in a pinch so stuff like spears arrows knives so kind of they were never in squarely in the prey category for mountain lions and they just don't really view us as prey like leopards or lions or tigers do back to our story that night earn you would hear on the news that his friend barbra had not been murdered but that she had been killed by a mountain lion and he realized there was a good chance that lion had still been there watching him from the brush while he waited with the body broke down into tears at the kitchen table as his family surrounded him and did their best to comfort him based on the details that these investigators and wildlife officials could get from the scene they were able to piece together what probably happened to barbra as she was on her morning run there's a bit of a disagreement between some of these professionals as they investigated the scene and i'm going to use kind of the one they constructed that came from the person that i thought had the most experience and that made the most sense and now that we know who our culprit is i'm going to say my source my primary source was this book cat attacks by Joe Deborah and Dean Miller this book's quite good actually if you're interested in in mountain lion attacks what's it about interesting details it's about cat attacks great question okay as barbra ran she got warmer and tighter sweats her to round her waist less than an hour into a run she approached a long you shaped curve that at its peak overlooked the american river far below it's a beautiful section of this trail and it also happened to be the spot where a young female mountain lion was hunting that morning this lion had likely seen dozens if not hundreds of runners and hikers and walkers in the area throughout its life but something about barbra it's impossible to say exactly what this was peaked the interest of this particular mountain lion and it started following her progress from high on the hill it's a quickly move through the man's anita and the scrub oak it's keeping its large green eyes on the moving woman below on the trail and then it kind of saw where she was heading and it ran around this u-shaped thing and shortcutter and was waiting for her head and dense brushy area with a steep slope although this is a younger mountain lion it already knew that the reduced visibility and a steep downhill would help it catch and then use gravity of its falling prey to kill it as quickly as possible might you have a question now it's just thinking that's probably how obi one felt with the high ground yeah it knew it had the high ground exactly the run around that's something that could happen at this point to grab it from winning I assume there probably wasn't lava on this running trail either so it's feeling extra so yeah it didn't have to worry about our confidence yeah all right so this lion is essentially waiting lying and waiting in this brush when Barbara enters this area and when she speeds past this crouch predator it jumps forward and ran toward the woman so it let they think it let her run by it and then it ran behind her completely silent it had never attacked a human before its mother had never attacked a human before but this mountain lion had a cub stashed in a bush not far from here and for whatever reason she decided to investigate this new food source Barbara likely didn't even see it as the 82 pound cat slammed into her 5-8 120 pound frame and center sliding down the hill 50 feet until both of them hit a small pine tree during this slide she probably felt sharp pain in her shoulder and neck while the cat tried to find a killing bite on prey that had never really encountered before she reached behind her with her hands to try and free herself from this violent mystery attacker and in the process the mountain lion bit her hands pretty severely so severely that as they were investigating the crime scene they found one of her gloves and the tip of her finger was inside of the glove she's pinned against the tree the cat continues to try and bite and kill her it's raking at her with its claws biting her hands and arms as she reach behind to try and pry it off and then its teeth found her neck and bit deep tearing her artery and spraying blood about six feet high into the branches of the tree that they were pinned against this is again what one of the experts things happened a lot of the news reported her as like getting up and fighting off this cat and then getting attacked again I tend to think that probably didn't happen because usually if people do get up and fight it lasts a lot longer because the cat loses its bravado it kind of like realizes that it's dealing with something different than what it usually kills and just based off of what I heard about this crime scene not crime scene this attack scene it does seem like it was very quick and I think that's the way I'd like to imagine it too because of all this blood loss with the open artery spraying blood she lost her strength fast the cat readjusted its grip and bit into her head fracturing her skull and then it pulled and started dragging her deeper into the brush there is some evidence that would suggest she was still alive when the cat started feeding on her and into her organs tearing through a ribcage but for me I'd like to think that her consciousness was either far away because she'd lost so much blood or that she'd already died either way it was pretty quick the cat fed then it cashed Barbara's body near the kill site and then returned that night and dragged the body even further into the brush to the spot where ultimately Russ would find his friend dead the next day and that night she and her cub both fed on the body they found lots of little bite marks from the cub and then they walked to the nearby creek to drink her cub was about the size of a house cat at this point playful and like any good mother cougar she was constantly protecting feeding grooming her offspring so what looked to at first be a cruel evil murder was actually just a natural predator securing unnatural prey for its cub there's no malice there's no ill will but also no compassion it's just a simple violent transaction that this mountain line had repeated time and time again throughout its life with other prey and I just want people to think about that because think you hear about something like this especially the way we set up this story is kind of a murder mystery and it sounds so scary and when you picture a mountain line you know biting into someone that feels very violent and intentional this is just how they get food this is an animal that is a predator they only eat meat there's there's nothing in this cat that is angry or anything against this person it's just trying to eat you know and that is just it just is unfortunate that this time it was a human that had decided to eat both for the human and for this cat which we'll talk about almost immediately a hunt was launched to try and catch the responsible mountain line hound's men from around the region were called they use bite marks and evidence from the site and guess that they're probably looking for an adult female mountain line or an immature male five teams of professional trackers with their hounds combed the area day and night but a cold spell and some rain made finding any fresh tracks really difficult for these hunters and they decided to focus on the area around where they found the body because mountain lines obviously returned to their kills as much as possible but then they even do it sometimes when the kills been removed so while the hunters were confident they would catch a mountain line sooner later they knew they had to do it sooner because the longer that time passed the less evidence they would have to prove that the cat they caught was the one responsible so after a few days enough time would pass that the stomach contents wouldn't prove anything and then that after a few more days any blood or skin under the claws wouldn't be usable either so they knew they had to catch it quick on May 1st 1994 they finally crossed a fresh mountain line track near the kill site and within a matter of minutes their dogs had a tree a cat in a large black oak not far from where her body had been found when I say tree that means they chased the the mountain line up a tree and they kept it up in the tree the lead hunter who worked for the federal government got permission from local wildlife officials to shoot the cat and with one shot he brought her down from the tree the subsequent analysis showed that this mountain line had human tissue under its nails and officials were very confident that they had caught the responsible lion she was lactating so they knew that there had to be a cub nearby three days later they found a dehydrated and weak cub on a rock out cropping nearby it was taken to a nearby zoo it was named Willow and it lived there had a really good life for 15 years Pete Barbus Husband would actually take his kids to the zoo to visit Willow which to me is like really beautiful and poetic made me a little emotional because like both of these kids lost their moms to this terrible interaction and they both kind of got to bond over that yeah I thought that was really this is like a anger exercise they went out there just like for blocks that you deserve to be in there I don't think that was it I think Pete was doing it for the more beautiful reason all right just like I'm imagining him praying for to have a broken ankle all right it's crazy dude that's crazy to me just me just me a really interesting thing is this was the first mountain line fatality in California since 1909 and there had been two deaths in 1909 but they're both the result of a rabid mountain lion and now a healthy wild normal mountain lion had killed a person and it really changed the vibe in that part of California especially in the running community people just kind of suddenly felt like all of these trails and everything they used to run were suddenly a lot wilder than they had thought and I want to read a quote from a 2004 article on a running website it says in some ways it would almost have been better if it had been someone who had killed Barbara a homicide said Greg Sotterland race director of the western states 100 mile endurance run it would have been easier to understand but it was way worse that it was a cougar because it changed things for all of us it really did the innocence was gone these animals could not only hurt you they could kill you I interesting perspective to take a very interesting one and I think that's what I was going to say yeah it's like you have to wait till a mountain lion kill someone to know that they can kill someone right when like they've they killed other people during that time period in other parts of the world and it's kind of I think it's kind of similar to how in like Yosemite they don't allow bear spray because their bears have never attacked anyone and it's like well they're going to at some point you know and I just I think it's a little naive and I also think it's a little um and I don't want to be too hard on this guy but it it's kind of a little egotistical to think like you know we're just out in nature and we're kind of top dog out here you know and nothing bad has ever happened so nothing ever will egotistical is the right the wrong word but more of like I don't know it that's not the world I want to live in where you like we don't have to think about that you know and I get that for them that was just a negative but also it kind of was a reminder like hey we've preserved a wild space here there's wild animals there's animals here that have been existing here a lot longer than we have and we've managed to keep some of them here and that's something that we were just reminded about in a really violent way and we need to think about and we need to prepare and educate and be more prepared next time for sure anyway I think it's important that we have places where mountain lions can live and that we just need to be a little bit more ready to enter those places and if California does kill all their mountain lions maybe they'll put them on their flag at least yes you're just put them right under that bear like Grizzly Bear yeah oh you want both of them on there you don't want to just to replace the bear they just start adding every dangerous animal that they've gotten rid of no it is it's kind of like I don't know it's something to think about Tony Hawk why is that well it's just like you know the 900 is possible but like it's kind of hard to believe it until someone actually does it yeah but now you just got like nine year old kids doing like 12 80s back to back and stuff so yeah someone had to break through that barrier you know so that's why I think this mountain line is kind of like the Tony Hawk well it's kind of interesting you say that because like I mean this was the third fatality in the state there's two people killed in 1909 by a rabbit cat and since 1994 there's been four more so it did kind of speed on after this happen that is interesting how close to when Tony Hawk did the 900 it's not too far from that yeah that's what I'm saying and why would you guys think that there probably has been a little bit more conflict between humans and mountains in California encroachment yes encroachment we're just pushing animals toward things that they can't handle and sometimes then they have to take bigger risks and in this case I don't think that's what happened I think like this was just a cat that decided it wanted to try something new and I went for it it was healthy it wasn't in a place where it was really being encroached there's plenty of deer but that can happen too and that's the important thing so that's why on this podcast we teach people what to do and there's a couple tips I just want to go over quickly before we got into categories first of all bear spray does work on mountain lions so if you're worried about mountain lions by can a bear spray take it with you it works really well on this animal the main thing is you got to see it first which isn't always the case on like with Barbara so if you're on a trail and you're running or whatever I would recommend you do it with a friend if you're in mountain lion country or do it like midday rather than early morning or late at night if you have a pet keep it leashed if you're with small children don't let them go too far ahead of you on the trail or whatever if you see in a mountain lion don't approach it don't run stay calm if it comes toward you then you start making a lot of noise you get yourself as big as possible be very aggressive if it keeps coming toward you you can even run toward it and just try and intimidate it you're trying to be as dominant as loud as intimidating as possible if it does attack you you need to fight it off you never play dead you never do anything else you fight it off I do think like that's part of why they are so scary though is all that advice you just gave us great and yeah I don't think she could have really done any of that you know yeah it got her from behind she never saw it coming and like with bears I feel like most of the time you have a second to get your bear spray out yeah and with mountain lion sometimes it's just like you're falling down a hill with a tooth in your neck for sure but it's like these ones that you hear about were it's like that so quick and so they're like of the 28 fatalities there's been in North America there's like two or three of them that are like that most of them are more prolonged where you know there could have been something that stopped it from happening it's like when a great white decides it wants to just eat someone and it just bites them in half it hardly ever happens but when it does there's just nothing you can do and like you always say this is a bad idea of a maybe for mountain lions it'd be kind of smart to pat a little bear spray on the back of your neck before you putt I don't know if I would do that no I would not do that but maybe like a necklace of cans of bear spray or just like where one of those airplane pillows as you run yeah we're like tape a tide pod there because that'll you die if you eat one of those that is it is one of those animals though that the preventative measures you can take before you have an encounter it seems like the most important step like yeah just don't be out there alone the more people you have with you it'll just drastically the reduce the chances that something like that will ever happen in the first place it is with mountain lions the thing I just really want to drill in is that they hardly ever attack people and when they do it's usually little kids it just doesn't happen that often considering how many of them there are of all of our big cats this is the only one in the world that's IUC and lease concern they're doing great there are lots of them and they don't attack us they really just leave us alone they're very conflict averse they're not defensive when they do attack it's predatory and that's incredibly rare so if you are worried about them that's fine I get it I understand that it's worried there might be something out there hunting you carry some bear spray go out in groups you'll be fine so should we get on to our categories I have one question just a general question about caching since that came up a little bit in the story I know it's different because you worked primarily with bears and not mountain lions but just generally with caching is it usually about the same amount of dirt and branches and stuff they'll try to cover it up with or does that always yeah grizzlies will sometimes put like a ton of material over their stuff like a huge mound mountain lions it tends to be like this real shallow kind of thing like we talked about and it's mostly just to cut down scent and make it harder for stuff to find it but I don't know how much variation there is in between individuals I didn't think about mountain lions so sometimes they'll cash their prey before they even feed on it sometimes they'll immediately cash it and then come back later to actually feed on it yeah sometimes I'll grab like a free donut from the office lunchroom yeah but like you're not hungry for it yet so you just put it by your mouse on your desk sometimes if I'm getting a sandwich I'll buy two sandwiches and cash one for later yeah just a word or hat smart all right well if there's not any other questions should we get into our categories yeah I want to add one yeah I want to do that animal Olympics okay I just wanted to say really quickly too like it's very possible some of her kids her kids are still alive her husband's probably still alive this is a huge tragedy and our hearts definitely go out to you guys like can imagine losing someone this close to me in this way so hopefully you guys are and we still do know okay I joked a bit but like we actually really do appreciate you visiting that lion at the zoo and still yeah not hating mountain night yeah would Willow still be alive no Willow lived it was the um fulsome city zoo sanctuary which I looked at their website seems like a pretty good zoo and Willow was there for 15 years and then I believe passed away which is a healthy old age for a mountain lion so okay our first category your favorite pop culture were CSI or any kind of crime scene investigation plays a big role I'm gonna go with man hunter the Michael man movie just where he has like the voice recorder and he's really like detailed about everything he sees in the room it's like the Hannibal type of story with uh what I'm blanking on his name lelector what's it yeah Hannibal Lecker and we'll like yeah yeah but it was like the first version of that which actually might be my favorite even over silence of the lambs it's still man hunter and there's that scene where he just like really breaks down a murder room that was really good yeah oh that reminds me of the think it's season one of the wire where mcnaulty and his partner go to the the little apartment where there was a shooting and it's just them saying the f word for like eight minutes straight that's the only thing they say uh that's not my answer my answer is it's a game called the return of the obrden and it's like sometime back in I don't know 1800 just something a bow that that C was lost and it was kind of a mysterious disappearance but then all of a sudden it comes back to the docs but no one's alive on it and they only have like the captains log book to kind of suss out exactly what happened you spend the whole game and it's really cool like a visual aesthetic they have going on it's like a pointalism pixel based kind of thing beautiful music but you are the investigator you're the crime scene investigator trying to like get you're getting up to some supernatural investigative techniques it's really cool it's a really beautiful and fun game you probably love like an escape room if you're into that nope I would not oh boy I would have to do that solo first too yes yes I'm just gonna go hang out in the escape room by myself all right mine I picked a kind of weird one and I think I maybe said this before when we talked about like detectives but I picked the Tarsam Singh movie the cell starring Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Lopez and shoot what's his name the guy from Full Metal Jacket Vincent DeVonterio beautiful movie it is really beautifully shot but when I saw that movie I was younger in college and it kind of made me want to be an FBI agent for a bit because seeing the way they like analyzed crime scene and they like found a dog hair and realized you know that you had a dog and all these different things just made me think like oh this is this really interesting puzzle that they're putting together to say people's lives and in that movie it's like a very easy thing to conceptualize because it's like there's a ticking timer until the next victim dies so it just I don't know for whatever reason that movie made me think that crime scene investigation was really cool never seen a single episode of CSI is interesting is cashpan tell like the FBI director yeah FBI you want to be able to like find every clue in everything yeah and he can open his eyes wider than anyone else so I do want to give that like helps them at all that's probably like why you got to point it is this guy is not gonna miss anything yeah he sees everything like a mountain he probably has like a yeah mountain lion 360 degrees how many rods do you think he has in there and cones millions all right so our next category I want to hear your favorite two nicknames that you've ever had this is a cat with a lot of names what are your favorite nicknames to anyone's ever given you when I was little my best friends last name was Simpson and I'd go over to their house all the time and he had a much a really cool older brothers that like didn't really ever give me the time of day but when they found out my last name was Smith they called me Smithers because they were huge yeah it's actually kind of funny we're having a like a family dinner I was just at the table like I was the awkward little friend and the rest of the family is at the table and one of the brothers said something like I'm getting kind of tired of the Simpsons and it was like a scandal it turned into like a big fight but yeah I appreciated them calling me Smithers because it felt like I don't know when someone gives you a nickname it's like you get you're it's like the seal approval you know what's your other one or a bully I think it's usually in German even if it feels like bullying sometimes right don't think it I think there's plenty of cases where nicknames are we're bully okay we might hear of one of those from Jeff maybe even two sounds and so we're giving yeah my friends in high school called me Smith which is kind of a that was like it came out of nowhere and has never been said to me again outside of those like three years but yeah all right Jeff the years might did we never give you a better nickname than it's it's might was it fun like stem cell Mike or something yeah stem cell research Mike too Jeff what are your two favorite nicknames maybe I'll have to replace one I'd like Jay first that was like a of all the 20 nicknames my older brothers gave me that as the one I was kind of chill with yeah I kind of like that and then actually I like goop to goop so it's kind of funny to me and yeah I like bad Jeff bad Jeff was my favorite because we had two Jeff's and I went by bad bad Jeff which kind of I feel cool going by bad Jeff cool all right Jay Z biggie was my two favorite ice cookie are probably Vaisel which was weasel in German and that's what my dad called me growing up still calls me that sometimes and then I actually like the one I gave myself which was Gruz Kid which was more of an Instagram handle but kind of turned into a nickname that a lot of people call me jizz kid jizz kid I've never given myself that nickname but I've said it before sure but we've been that's what we've been calling you behind your back for years yeah that is an interesting case where not often is it that you give yourself a nickname that catches on yeah and it wasn't off that wasn't my my plan you know all right I got a fun category now a game this this game is called mountain lion or mountain truth and all right I'm going to ask you guys a series of questions about mountains that are to their truth or false truth or false questions am I saying that right why do we're false truth you don't take truth yeah and you guys have to tell me whether or not they're true or false the rules are whoever misses the most has to buy 10 dollars or less treat for me and the winner in the airport on Saturday but if either of you get all of the questions right I will buy you 10 dollars in treats regardless and the winner and the loser will also have to buy them for you in the airport go on Saturday okay mountain lion or mountain truth and question number one mount elbert and calirato is the highest peak in the lower 48 at 14,497 feet followed closely by mount wittany in california at 14,433 feet is that mountain lion or mountain truth and can I just say false instead of that other thing sure I'm gonna say false assay true it is false mount wittany is the tallest in the lower 48 so so far Mike has one Jeff does am I I'm gonna lead and Jeff you can't get all of them okay number two the mid ocean ridge mountain system is by far the longest mountain system in the world underwater stretching approximately 40,000 miles over its total length I'll say false because under water doesn't can I'll say true because I've heard something about an underwater mountain lion being the longest okay Mike is two for two Jeff is zero for two mountain truth and number three the longest range on land are the andes in south america I'll say false because those are actually underwater okay I'm gonna I'll get into the spear to the game I'm gonna say mountain truth and okay you are correct they're the longest mountain range on land Mike is three for three Jeff is over three Mike if you try next one right to go oh Jeff gets it right to shoot the moon if Jeff shoots the moon he's way he wins right sure if you get them all completely wrong I will buy you $10 entry number four the state of road island is the lowest average topography state in the country with the highest point a mere 345 feet in elevation mountain false and lion false lion it is false mountain lion florida is the lowest on average in the country who Mike you're four for four Jeff you got one right oh yeah I forgot I wondered all right number five rolled ammonson was the first person to summit mountain Everest completing the task in 1953 mountain lion it was not mine is some sherpa whose name I probably can't say probably a sherpa but the first white person is Sir Edmund Hillary right correct mountain lion it was Sir Edmund Hillary in that year 1953 final question here the I'm not saying that the white person is the only one that counts or is the first one that should count I'm just saying conventional I don't think that thing is I don't think these Nepali Sherpas were like going up there I think they're kind of like look at this mountain this is crazy you know I don't think I've never did it before it's possible I just want to say that like the way I said white person made it sound maybe like I was being no no no racially weird but like what I thought is they kind of just respected it too much to feel like they needed to go up there and like conquer you know sure yeah I think that was very much like a white colonial viewpoint okay number six Mike if you get this one right I will have to buy you a treat Jeff will have to buy you a treat Jeff will also have to buy me a treat number six just kind of has to mountains cover approximately 24% of the earth's surface fuss that's water 24% are mountains that's so I don't know like the tectonic plates inside I'll go true true mics nice jolly mully I owe you a treat Jeff those both of us treats hey thanks Jeff and what all right next category let's do our animal Olympics for mountain lions I just I want to throw one in here that I thought of when you talk about their whiskers yeah I think they could be a really good golf caddy West up because like golfers need to know the exact wind once they get really good oh that's a good point mountain lion would be able to tell them like exactly the wind I think with like their paws being extra sensitive to they'd be really good at reading the slopes off the green yeah so I think they'd be an excellent golf caddy they would do caddies also get the metal I hope so they deserve a life as board uh-huh it would suck if you got mauled every time you went to ask for a new club that would be the bad part about them being a caddy but aside from that something you recommend this week I'm gonna say Taylor's back that second to most recent album sucked but this one was great and father figures a great song I'm gonna recommend homemade bread and if you're bad at making homemade bread like I am I'd get a bread maker turns out they do a real good job for you it's really easy and it's delicious and it's like the great British bake off season so it's always like more fun to bake something when you have that that's true when you're in the mood I'm gonna recommend a nice fall walk I just feel like this is the best time of year to go for a nice little walk the leaves are beautiful it's crisp outside it's nice to hear like the crunching leaves under your feet I just think it's prime walking time right now so a fall walk all right I got a couple questions from patreon this one's from Izzy is he says hi guys I just discovered the pod via two scary didn't watch glad you listen to them Izzy uh question about sharks I know West said that they're more likely to attack if you're thrashing around in the water do sharks recognize the sound of human screams should you try to be as quiet as possible or does it not really matter I feel like it would be impossible for me not to scream if I were being bumped or attacked I screaming is much less important than thrashing so if you had to do one of the two I would say go ahead and scream um you want to just try and be as quiet and as calm as possible but screaming is definitely much lower priority than than the thrashing so just don't focus on not thrashing in the water and hopefully you can also try and stay as composed as possible would be my answer to that okay uh let's see question for the podcast this from Jonathan if there were a bare biologist draft think NBA draft and what place do you think West would be drafted and why for context where would Tom Smith be drafted for context yeah I don't know what that means but uh-huh I think hold on so like say where you think Tom would be drafted in the bare biologist draft and where I would be drafted oh bare but okay yeah sure I think I would be like 200th pick overall when it comes to like bare biologist there's a lot of bare biologists but I think if we were to talk about like outreach I'd be up pretty high but Tom I put Tom in my top 10 okay yeah yeah if it were the NFL draft with that many rounds you'll be taken eventually but if it was the NBA draft you might go on undraft didn't have to work your way onto a squad which is fun yeah yeah play in the Greek the Greek Japan needs and whatever the bare biologist they do yeah uh yeah I think when it comes to research there well I know there's a lot of bare biologists that are much smarter and more accomplished than I am um but I think I'm on the education front I'm probably a top 10 pick all right uh question for Jeff has there ever been any reports of people being killed by a house cat this is from Chey whether it be a passerby or their owner oh yeah you don't know someone's tripped over a cat down the stairs right I would guess indirectly someone is died that one guy opening the play station got close where he like got super excited and then his cat jumps on his neck oh yeah you think he was close to dying from that I know he had got stitches on his neck oh I didn't know that's you yeah jeez all right um this one's from Rachel is there a universally adored animal that for you is just kind of me minus kangaroos hmm hot tape you guys call now koala's were that way until we went to Australia and then I really saw the vision with koala's I'm still yeah I'm still pretty lukewarm on koalos I saw it I saw the H mine might be those ones and again another Australian animal those um forget what they're called but they're the little smiling ones that everyone goes onto that one island to see what are those animals called oh they with a cues uh yeah quaka Q dog walk I just they just never really did it for me it looks just kind of like a smiling squirrel I don't know yeah but there there's just like constantly like articles about them and like celebrities posting with them and everything so that's mine quaka's I'm having a hard time with this one lion is one for me I still really like them and think they're really cool but they're they're not really anywhere close to my favorite even in my top three big cats they'd be a distant fourth or fifth I'm with you there that's honestly might have become my favorite cat I think there's a cool they are cool you see zebras until I saw them like in a mass herd and I was like that looks so cool maybe like their gum is great too maybe like a you know like a cape buffalo Africa what's the African buffalo yeah I think yeah I keep buffalo yeah garrison's gonna be so mad again just think stayed along on every list of the animals big five yeah I'm gonna do one more patreon question this one's from rayan rhan says question for everyone but mostly west during the month of october would you rather give up all candy or all horror movies and tv shows you're giving up candy or movies gave up candy this october and it sucks but I have lost some weight am I still allowed to eat like cookies and donuts and stuff I don't know how to define candy but I don't think cookies count that's just what my brain is done I'm giving up candy I love watching horror movies in october so I'm gonna give up candy I can go without candy going up without sugar would be hard for me are you going without sugar Jeff pretty hard yeah yeah I have like a little bit but not my I have my two starbursts a day you know we do know but yeah I get more until horror movies after how we really yeah just because you want to write that warm outside yeah I think it's like a little too happy in warm outside still like once like all the leaves are down and it's like cold I get really into horror movies yeah right okay I got one more quick one actually from yash yash says west mentioned biologist being on oil company payroll how can we tell if a biologist is or isn't are there ways for people to check to make sure that a biologist is trustworthy I would just say like a quick litmus test is if you see a certain biologist in a field kind of saying the opposite of what every other expert in that field is saying and it kind of feels like it's something detrimental that they're saying then I would question them outside of that I think you have to dig a little deeper and kind of look at like their credentials you know how their paper is whatever else but with polar bear biologists that are being paid by oil or whatever it's generally pretty obvious because they're the only ones like saying polar bears are fine we shouldn't worry about climate change there's a there's a guy who's been bugging me on social media named Ivan Carter he's got like 700,000 followers but he keeps going to bear black that bear dens in Utah like we used to do yeah and acting like they're just asleep I think this video and they're just like he's done it a couple times now and it's just like taking off and in the comments about like all it's actually sedated but like in this like video he's like look at this sleeping bear and stuff yeah weird who's he with that sedating him yeah okay show I need a note all right since we don't have any Instagram ones we're doing one more patreon one this one's from Robin Robin says non animal question what are all of your favorite hot beverages minus chai tea with milk and a little honey mine would just be like a mocha I love I really like the taste of coffee but I like to cut it with something so I thought you were answering yours you were saying what there no I'm saying what yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah when there's the chat you were so Robin said minus chai tea with milk and a little honey mine mine is like a nice ok I like a nice hot mocha for sure at public yeah they have a good mocha you know I really love it I thought it was pubic I really love a pumpkin spice latte never had one but I do need to try it I've been really into apple cider this year I love good apple cider slaps I'm steaming I need more than a mug I need like a whole like a vet with a huge straw one of this one I have to like have to like a huge hole like this big yeah I have to like stretch my lips to get around it very hot then I've developed calluses it's super hot you don't want like a ton of ones I've synched all of my taste buds off it's not the taste I like it's just the texture okay quick conservation corner of all the big cats again this is the only one that's least concerned they're doing pretty well throughout their range there are spots where they are under a lot of pressure for example Florida Panthers are in a lot of trouble 200 left I don't know the exact numbers but they're not doing great out there I did see that number I'm not sure okay the Eastern how's the hockey team doing that they do great well right they're two and a Florida Panthers I thought we're doing great yeah one two apparently not the animals not doing great the Eastern Cougar was like extra pated so there's not many really west of the Mississippi or sorry east of the Mississippi but along their range in general they're least concerned we don't really have a good number for them even because there are so many but there's probably not quite as many as there are jaguars but there are a lot of mountain lions so so why is it the only cat that's least concerned because jaguar habitat is very fragmented and under a lot more threat than than pumas pumas are really good at like adapting the new habitat and living in a variety of habitats whereas jaguars are a little bit more restricted for prey for habitat for everything so I believe jaguars are vulnerable and mountain lions are least concerned so yeah all right oh let's do let's do a claw rating because we kind of haven't done this one for a minute and we talk about the animal fair amount pains me to do it but I have to go nine instead of 10 just because they're not even a top five favorite cat for me yeah which is tough because they deserve it's tough yeah same logic for me but I'm going even lower with an eight I don't know feel like we've been letting these animals get off a little easy on these claw ratings you know especially west it's 10 for me 10 yeah I love mountain lions I think they're consistently dipping in and out of my normal one spot for the big cats I think they're insanely beautiful again that I think they're like the consummate cat I think they're just like amazing at everything they do they're so beautiful they're so efficient and they live in so many different places I just love them so they're 10 platinum 10 they talk 10 animal for you probably well wow I don't know I got that's really hard for me but they are a 10 claw animal so yeah all right well thanks guys and thank you listeners if you are looking for more content check out our patreon Jeff just did round two on beavers Mike did one recently too that was great I don't know what it was yeah I'm sure it was incredible me and Mike have been doing our our mini our horror movie show on there too it's fun time you're gonna get a lot of extra content you're gonna get to interact with the two-thin-clock community at large it's it's really fun so check out patreon if you'd rather just have it right in your apple feed check out our apple gris club they're both affordably priced and we think you get a lot of bang for your buck for show all right okay all right love you guys see you guys bye bye