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CLASSIC: California Schoolchildren and the Great Squirrel War · Ridiculous History

0:00
Speaker 1: Fellow Ridiculous Historians, Welcome back to this week's classic episode.
0:04
Speaker 1: We are quickly approaching the moment Noel where our pal
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Speaker 1: Max Williams joins the show.
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Speaker 2: That's true, and this is a really fun episode to
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Speaker 2: mark the occasion, or you know, at least getting close
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Speaker 2: to the occasion, that time California school children participated in
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Speaker 2: something called the Great Squirrel War.
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Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, this is crazy. We don't even want
0:26
Speaker 1: to spoil it. Let's just roll the tape.
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Speaker 2: Let's do it.
0:32
Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio Friends, Neighbors, Farmers,
1:01
Speaker 1: city dwellers, rural and urban residents alike. Have you ever
1:07
Speaker 1: had an infestation of pest, say, roaches or rats or
1:12
Speaker 1: bats and so on? Hi, I'm ben.
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Speaker 2: No no, but I did once have a pet squirrel
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Speaker 2: named mister Muffin Tops. Was this?
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Speaker 1: Was it an animal that lived nearby or an animal
1:25
Speaker 1: in a cage?
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Speaker 2: Yes? Both? Okay, I made that up. I just wanted
1:30
Speaker 2: to say mister muffin Tops and I would honestly be
1:33
Speaker 2: terrified to have a squirrel for a pet. I'm very
1:35
Speaker 2: skittish around creatures that have unpredictable movements and beady eyes,
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Speaker 2: which squirrels definitely do.
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Speaker 1: I've had in my various stages of life, I've lived
1:47
Speaker 1: in places that were infested with bats, possums, and of
1:52
Speaker 1: course squirrels, which are wily creatures. I have a friend
1:56
Speaker 1: here in Atlanta, where this podcast is based who raised
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Speaker 1: a squirrel in his apartment, and the squirrel was very friendly,
2:04
Speaker 1: very nice. But eventually, you know, being wild animals, when
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Speaker 1: they reach adulthood, it's time to say goodbye.
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Speaker 2: Right.
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Speaker 1: It was a rescue squirrel, by the way, he didn't
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Speaker 1: steal it. But how could I mention infestations without talking
2:19
Speaker 1: about one of the number one infestations in my heart
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Speaker 1: and yours? Null super producer Casey Pegram.
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Speaker 2: It's just an infestation of joy and kindness, I know,
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Speaker 2: and goodwill towards humanity.
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Speaker 1: Yes, yes, and even squirrels, I would imagine, Casey, did
2:36
Speaker 1: you ever have an infestation in your house or your
2:39
Speaker 1: neighborhood growing up?
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Speaker 3: Yeah? Actually my parents' house, we had bats in the
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Speaker 3: attic and my room was upstairs, and so I was
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Speaker 3: the only one kind of in close proximity to said
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Speaker 3: bats like throughout the day, and I would just hear
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Speaker 3: these like kind of faint chirping sounds, and I, you know,
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Speaker 3: I reported this to my parents over and over tried
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Speaker 3: to get them to believe me, and they were just like, no,
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Speaker 3: it's just like a fan that's squeaky up there, you know.
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Speaker 3: And so one day my mom goes into the attic
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Speaker 3: and what does she see but a bat like feet
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Speaker 3: in front of her face, and she screams and freaks out,
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Speaker 3: and then they believe me about the bats after that point.
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Speaker 3: But I had actually gone as far as to like
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Speaker 3: take some of my audio recording gear and put it
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Speaker 3: up to the vent and like record them and then
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Speaker 3: boost it and post and you know, amplify the signal
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Speaker 3: enhanced and sounded like bats to me. But it required
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Speaker 3: a little more proof.
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Speaker 2: You, really, I think you ended up in the wrong field.
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Speaker 2: You should have become. You should have been like a
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Speaker 2: like a ghostbuster for pasts exactly, forensic tools, meters and
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Speaker 2: all that.
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Speaker 1: That's right, your Wanda monitor, yeah, exactly, Casey. On the case,
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Speaker 1: I had the same I'm bonding with you here, Casey,
3:51
Speaker 1: because I had the same situation I was in. I
3:54
Speaker 1: lived in a bonus room in our house and we
3:57
Speaker 1: had we had this unfit thing that was pretty much
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Speaker 1: an attic but had a creepy door to it. And
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Speaker 1: I remember vividly those weird chirping noises, but once you
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Speaker 1: see them in your house, it's surprising. The point of
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Speaker 1: this relatively circuitous introduction is to say that there is
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Speaker 1: one thing that unifies a lot of homeowners across the world,
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Speaker 1: and that is that we like our outside animals to
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Speaker 1: stay outside. And we often, in the course of human civilization,
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Speaker 1: come into conflict with animals. And this is this is
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Speaker 1: something historically happens all the time. You know, there are
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Speaker 1: stories of locusts in ancient text there are stories of
4:48
Speaker 1: other things. I'm off the top of the dome. Here, frogs,
4:51
Speaker 1: there we go. You know, the plagues, the biblical ones
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Speaker 1: the locusts would eat, would decimate fields of grain and
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Speaker 1: other crops.
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Speaker 2: And that's the thing. We like animals when they're cute
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Speaker 2: and cuddly, and they keep a healthy distance from us,
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Speaker 2: and they stay in their animal lanes. But as soon
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Speaker 2: as they start eating our lunch, it will not stand.
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Speaker 2: This is this animal aggression will not stand, my friends, and.
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Speaker 1: We often band together as humans to cooperatively combat the
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Speaker 1: threats posed by wild animals. Today's story takes us all
5:26
Speaker 1: the way back.
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Speaker 2: To nineteen eighteen.
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Speaker 1: As American soldiers were battling German forces in France, there
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Speaker 1: was an entirely new war going on in California, and
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Speaker 1: it used child.
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Speaker 2: Soldiers of all places. Yeah, this is how a fantastic
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Speaker 2: article on Alice Obscura sets up this tale. And little
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Speaker 2: spoilerlerd here in nineteen eighteen, California drafted children into a
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Speaker 2: war on squirrels, is the title of this article by
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Speaker 2: the fantastic Dave Gilson. I had never heard of this
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Speaker 2: and the squirrel war. We know about war as real
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Speaker 2: wars that were started by all kinds of arbitrary things,
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Speaker 2: like there's the stray dog war, there was the one
6:07
Speaker 2: about the camel, there was the one about like a bucket.
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Speaker 2: This is not a real war, but it involves some
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Speaker 2: anti German propaganda a little down the line. That's why
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Speaker 2: the setup works so well. But here's the thing. In California,
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Speaker 2: they were in the midst of a ground squirrel epidemic.
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Speaker 2: These little buggers were consuming about thirty million dollars worth
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Speaker 2: of crops, which if you enter that into the old
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Speaker 2: inflation calculator, it's approaching five hundred million dollars of food stuffs. Yeah.
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Speaker 1: Absolutely, I personally think squirrels are cute. I know they're
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Speaker 1: not for everybody, but I've also never been in a
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Speaker 1: situation where they are literally eating eating the food supply
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Speaker 1: on which I would depend. So these squirrels were not loved,
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Speaker 1: not lovable. They were seen as a source of pestilence,
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Speaker 1: you know, and they were thought to be a vector
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Speaker 1: for the plague. So California addressed the problem. And we've
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Speaker 1: got a great quote from State Horticulture Commissioner George h. Heck,
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Speaker 1: which is a cool name, so old Man Heck says,
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Speaker 1: we have enemies here at home, more destructive perhaps than
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Speaker 1: some of the enemies our boys are fighting and the trenches.
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Speaker 1: He said this as part of an impassioned call up
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Speaker 1: for what he called school soldiers to self organize, you know,
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Speaker 1: within your classroom, your friends, or your overall school to
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Speaker 1: eradicate these ground squirrels. In California as part of a
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Speaker 1: seven day event they called Squirrel Week. You know, because
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Speaker 1: a week is seven days long, is.
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Speaker 2: That like Shark Week?
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Speaker 1: It is a little more agro than Shark Week, but
7:58
Speaker 1: deep cut, nice reference. Do we mention that on air.
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Speaker 2: Back to the old, the old parent company. Yeah, back
8:04
Speaker 2: several parent companies ago, Shark Week was was a regular
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Speaker 2: occurrence around the office.
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Speaker 1: People still love Shark Week. That's still a thing, right, Yeah,
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Speaker 1: Shark Week is great. It's it's good stuff to watch.
8:14
Speaker 1: I think what got us is way back in the
8:17
Speaker 1: day when when we worked with Discovery, every podcast was
8:21
Speaker 1: told to come up with something related to Shark Week.
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Speaker 1: And I don't know if I ever mentioned this to you,
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Speaker 1: but this was when Scott, Benjamin and I were still
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Speaker 1: doing car stuff and we see guys car stuff and sharks.
8:34
Speaker 1: How do we make this work? But we did twice.
8:36
Speaker 1: You can check about They're not They're not the best episodes, but.
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Speaker 2: There I'm sure there are a lot of fun don
8:41
Speaker 2: I enjoy that entire catalog and I miss it dearly,
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Speaker 2: just just like everyone else. It's true. But you know what,
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Speaker 2: forget move over Shark Week. It's time for Squirrel Week.
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Speaker 2: And what Squirrel Week was was a promotion that the
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Speaker 2: government pumped a pretty penny into to disseminate print and
8:59
Speaker 2: dissemin pamphlets, posters, and all of all kinds of literature.
9:04
Speaker 2: Because that's what you spent money on in those days.
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Speaker 2: I don't know, maybe some broadcast pieces, what do you think.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, public speeches. California is set aside forty large from
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Speaker 1: their emergency wartime fund to create this Squirrel Week campaign.
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Speaker 1: And it was a pr blitz, as you said, around
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Speaker 1: thirty four thousand posters popped up around the state, half
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Speaker 1: a million leaflets and the pamphlet which you can see.
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Speaker 1: The pamphlet is not subtle.
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Speaker 2: You can see.
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Speaker 1: Victors of this in the article and then in archival
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Speaker 1: reports from papers of the time. It says it's a
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Speaker 1: nice old timey propaganda cartoon kind of approach, and it
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Speaker 1: says in the top left, kill the squirrels, and it
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Speaker 1: shows a mother or a teacher instructing children to scatter
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Speaker 1: poison bar and then it it shows squirrels in the
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Speaker 1: bottom mister and missus squirrel h dining on dining like.
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Speaker 2: Kings, right, yeah, literally, and they've all got little speech
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Speaker 2: bubbles next to them. And it's like the caption for
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Speaker 2: this particular comic is our star borders as though they're
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Speaker 2: at some sort of bed and breakfast, like we're giving
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Speaker 2: them free you know, free room and board. And one
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Speaker 2: of the missus squirrel. I'm sorry, mister squirrel is saying,
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Speaker 2: wait time today, I'll have my favorite dish, whole wheat cakes.
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Speaker 2: And then missus squirrel replies, and you may save me
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Speaker 2: some nice young body.
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Speaker 1: Sprouts, and she's holding up glasses like opera glasses, opera glasses.
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Speaker 1: And in the back behind the hapless waiter who has
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Speaker 1: a tag describing him as a farmer, there is a
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Speaker 1: sign that says Hotel California board bill for squirrels in
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Speaker 1: nineteen seventeen thirty million dollars. So that's the amount of
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Speaker 1: damage this ground squirrel infestation was doing to the agriculture
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Speaker 1: of California.
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Speaker 2: Here's my favorite little detail. I actually didn't notice this
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Speaker 2: until just now. On the bottom outside of the circle
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Speaker 2: that's sort of the cartoon panel that's framing the squirrel
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Speaker 2: scene are two squirrels wearing those Kaiser Wilhelm kind of
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Speaker 2: spiked helmets. Yep. And that's the little touch of anti
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Speaker 2: German propaganda. And we'll hear more about that in some
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Speaker 2: of these other pamphlets.
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Speaker 3: Right.
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Speaker 1: So, what they wanted to do in this Squirrel Week
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Speaker 1: campaign was to inspire patriotism in kids who knew that
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Speaker 1: their relatives or maybe even one of their parents was
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Speaker 1: active in the war effort. They wanted these kids to
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Speaker 1: feel like they were doing their part by sprinkling rodent
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Speaker 1: side outside of these various squirrel burrows. The pamphlet even
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Speaker 1: included a recipe for strict nine laced grain, as well
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Speaker 1: as suggestions for other squirrel killing methods shooting, drowning, the
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Speaker 1: use of poisonous gas. This is heavy, heavy stuff for children,
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Speaker 1: but they knew that money talks, right. The heart may
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Speaker 1: want what it wants, but the pocketbook does too. So
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Speaker 1: just in case doing one's patriotic duty was not inspiration enough,
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Speaker 1: they also sweetened the pot with rewards for the kids
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Speaker 1: who killed the most squirrels.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, it was a tiered rewards system, fifty bucks for
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Speaker 2: the winner at each elementary school. What the organization behind
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Speaker 2: this must have been pretty decent, right, Yeah, so fifty
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Speaker 2: bucks for the grand prize, and then you got your
12:44
Speaker 2: runners up making thirty and twenty and ben you want
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Speaker 2: to you want to handy dandy inflation calculatron, those bad boys.
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Speaker 1: Sure, fifty bucks is around eight hundred dollars today, zounds,
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Speaker 1: I know, especially Can you imagine you're in elementary school,
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Speaker 1: you get eight hundred.
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Speaker 2: What are you gonna do with that? Buy more ammunition
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Speaker 2: for your red ryder bb gun. I imagine.
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Speaker 1: I don't know, man, they might get in like this
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Speaker 1: feedback loop and just buy more strict nine.
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Speaker 2: To poison the week. How many full blown psychopaths do
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Speaker 2: you think this program created? Ben?
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Speaker 1: Probably about three hundred and seventeen.
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Speaker 2: You put that on the inflation calculator.
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Speaker 1: So if you got the runner up position and you
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Speaker 1: got thirty dollars, that was still five hundred dollars back then.
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Speaker 1: And then if you got twenty bucks, that was still
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Speaker 1: three hundred and thirty something dollars. So this is this
13:39
Speaker 1: is good cash for psychopaths.
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Speaker 2: Potential budding psychopaths, aspiring psychopaths, right totally. So the thing
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Speaker 2: that's that's really interesting is this was all happening during
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Speaker 2: World War One and there was always a need for propaganda,
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Speaker 2: and they were certainly able to sneak these messages into
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Speaker 2: this material for for Squirrel Week and start making the
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Speaker 2: squirrels like stand ins for the greater enemy at large,
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Speaker 2: and the language even really started to shift to some
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Speaker 2: slogans like this, he preys on our crops and countless hordes.
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Speaker 2: He fills the ranks of the killed in true military fashion.
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Speaker 2: You know why hesitate? We can get them, how poison them,
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Speaker 2: gas them, drown them, shoot them, trap them, submarinum. Why
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Speaker 2: do you submarin a squirrel?
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Speaker 1: It feels like just a different way of saying drown them.
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Speaker 1: They also had neat little catchphrases. Right in one text,
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Speaker 1: it says millions of food must be saved. Slay the
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Speaker 1: mother squirrel during breeding season. March to me, remember a
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Speaker 1: squirrel in time saves killing nine.
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Speaker 2: That's right, But that's.
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Speaker 1: The there's a loophole with that. And I don't want
14:50
Speaker 1: to be too cold, but if we are addressing the
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Speaker 1: reward system in play, then you would want to kill
14:57
Speaker 1: nine squirrels. You wouldn't want to kill them early, you
14:59
Speaker 1: know what I mean. They didn't think that all the
15:01
Speaker 1: way through, but they had a lot of money on
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Speaker 1: the line, and with this creeping propaganda, with these squirrels
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Speaker 1: being painted increasingly as German soldiers, if we're being honest,
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Speaker 1: we see the cause move beyond the boundaries of California.
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Speaker 1: The US Food Administrator at the time, a guy named
15:26
Speaker 1: Herbert Hoover, who would later go on to be President
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Speaker 1: heartily approved of this effort because he said they were
15:34
Speaker 1: saving vast quantities of food which might otherwise be used
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Speaker 1: for support of our armies abroad. So we're not just
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Speaker 1: fighting pests in California, We're helping the war effort in Europe.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. I mean it's just empowering. And again,
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Speaker 2: this is kids. This is directed at kids. This is
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Speaker 2: a school like box top program essentially, but instead of
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Speaker 2: box tops, you're bringing in squirrel tales or literally entire
16:02
Speaker 2: dead squirrel carcasses. There's an image from the Internet archive
16:05
Speaker 2: that's posted on this outs Obscure article where it is
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Speaker 2: a barbed wire fence hung with dozens of dead squirrels.
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Speaker 2: I mean, it is very macab. There's even instructions published
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Speaker 2: for how to hook up a tube to the exhaust
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Speaker 2: pipe of a car and fill squirrel burrows with carbon
16:23
Speaker 2: monoxide to literally gas them out.
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Speaker 1: And kids loved this exactly, just gleeful murder. Kids loved this.
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Speaker 1: They also, they loved it so much that some kids
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Speaker 1: were impatient. They didn't want to wait for all the tallies,
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Speaker 1: so they started sending squirrel carcasses directly to Commissioner. Heck,
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Speaker 1: even before squirrel Weeks started, so his office literally began
16:48
Speaker 1: to reek, and he made a special request that children
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Speaker 1: no longer send him any more tales directly, and he
16:55
Speaker 1: told all the county commissioners working for him, like, okay,
16:58
Speaker 1: count the tales, keep the tally, but then please get
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Speaker 1: rid of them, bury them or something. Stop sending squirrel
17:06
Speaker 1: tales to my office. My wife won't touch me, she says.
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Speaker 1: I wreak of death and rodents. I added that last part.
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Speaker 1: There's a little bit of poetic license.
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Speaker 2: But it was a smashing success because I think they
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Speaker 2: tallied somewhere, you know, official number. The official number was
17:25
Speaker 2: upwards of one hundred thousand squirrels dead were recorded, but
17:29
Speaker 2: they you know, it's assumed that that it would have
17:32
Speaker 2: exceeded that number by quite a lot, just with the
17:35
Speaker 2: attitude of rampant squirrel murder that was, you know, pervasive
17:39
Speaker 2: in all of California around this time, and that attitude
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Speaker 2: continued into the future even once the program expired. That's right.
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Speaker 1: We don't know how long it lasted after Squirrel Week.
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Speaker 1: We do know, however, thanks to a report called California
17:53
Speaker 1: Ground Squirrels, a bulletin dealing with life history habits and
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Speaker 1: control of the ground squirrels in California, that this this
18:00
Speaker 1: machine could not switch on and off. This cultural impetus
18:04
Speaker 1: that they had created, continued on and for a quote
18:09
Speaker 1: indefinite period of time. Afterwards, these kids kept killing squirrels.
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Speaker 1: We do have one example, just to give us a
18:17
Speaker 1: snapshot of the level of squirrel genocide occurring here in
18:22
Speaker 1: lass In County. Later in the year there was another
18:25
Speaker 1: anti squirrel campaign. One girl, one female student brought in
18:30
Speaker 1: three thousand, seven hundred and eighty tails and one boy
18:33
Speaker 1: brought in three thousand, seven hundred and seventy. So now
18:38
Speaker 1: we have to ask ourselves, were these kids very very
18:42
Speaker 1: talented squirrel assassins or were there just that many squirrels.
18:47
Speaker 1: Were the hills, you know, alive with the chitters of squirrels?
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Speaker 2: Yeah, the hills have eyes, my friend, tiny beady, fidgety
18:54
Speaker 2: squirrel eyes and tails. Did we talk about the difference
18:57
Speaker 2: between a bushy tailed tree square and a little bit
19:01
Speaker 2: more of a skinny tailed, chipmunk looking ground squirrel?
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Speaker 1: We have not. That's a that's a good call. Let's
19:07
Speaker 1: get into that. So ground squirrels technically are known as
19:11
Speaker 1: odo spermophyllis Beachi.
19:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was having a hard time with that second part.
19:15
Speaker 2: Two's got the double e and then the why and
19:18
Speaker 2: then the why. The plot twisty is a big plot
19:20
Speaker 2: twist why. But I think maybe any intrepid, ridiculous historians
19:25
Speaker 2: out there that are what do you call that? Squorel
19:27
Speaker 2: squirrel ofphiles?
19:28
Speaker 1: You know, it's a good question. I don't know whether
19:31
Speaker 1: we have in this language is specific word for squirrels,
19:35
Speaker 1: but I do have good news. We can make one up.
19:38
Speaker 1: The language is flexible enough. Let's see. We could say
19:43
Speaker 1: squirrel ologists, which is which is tough?
19:46
Speaker 2: That's real?
19:47
Speaker 1: No? I mean, well it is, okay, got it?
19:49
Speaker 2: English is a malleable language for sure. Squirrel squirrel that's hard.
19:53
Speaker 2: That's holologists. How about?
19:55
Speaker 1: Okay, So squirrels are part of the scuri day family,
19:59
Speaker 1: so maybe they could call themselves scuriologists. That sounds a
20:03
Speaker 1: little bit more legitimate. Although wait, now that I think
20:07
Speaker 1: about it, and I've seen this question before somewhere, I
20:10
Speaker 1: think rodentologist is actually a word. Squirrel Ologists might not be,
20:15
Speaker 1: but rodentologists, I'll bet some scratch on that.
20:19
Speaker 2: Surely that must be a thing.
20:20
Speaker 1: All right, So rodentologist is probably the closest we'll get
20:25
Speaker 1: until ridiculous historians we hear from you, because, as you said, Noel,
20:30
Speaker 1: English is malleable. It is a living language, and you
20:33
Speaker 1: know this might be interesting. Hey, Casey, what's the French
20:38
Speaker 1: word for squirrel? I'm just curious to see whether that
20:40
Speaker 1: would be easier.
20:41
Speaker 3: It's not easy. In fact, it's a weird one. The
20:44
Speaker 3: French word for squirrel is rolls off the tongue, right, oh.
20:48
Speaker 1: Man, Casey, on the case, I think we might have
20:53
Speaker 1: to stick with squirrel guys or rodentologist. Squirrel weekended on
21:02
Speaker 1: May fourth. Children continued hunting and killing squirrels to combat
21:07
Speaker 1: this campaign, and the state considered this a great success.
21:13
Speaker 1: According to reports, the crop yields bounced back in areas
21:17
Speaker 1: where squirrels had been eradicated, so there was a clear correlation.
21:22
Speaker 1: But here we are a little more than a century later,
21:26
Speaker 1: and ground squirrels are still considered insidious pest, you know
21:31
Speaker 1: what I mean.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, it's certainly insight that we're used to around here
21:34
Speaker 2: in Georgia, But for me, it's more the tree squirrels
21:37
Speaker 2: that I'm used to seeing and whenever I go somewhere else,
21:39
Speaker 2: and I see a different type of pervasive rodent, like say,
21:43
Speaker 2: chipmunks or whatever that weirds me out, because I totally
21:46
Speaker 2: did not remark upon like squirrels are like pigeons in
21:49
Speaker 2: New York City or something like that. Around here, it's
21:51
Speaker 2: just a very common occurrence and they don't really threaten me.
21:53
Speaker 2: But have you ever seen like a rogue squirrel that
21:56
Speaker 2: I'll like, it looks a little slack jawed and like
21:59
Speaker 2: like shamble too close to you, like it's got the
22:01
Speaker 2: rabies or something that's no fun.
22:04
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean a lot of people here hate squirrels,
22:08
Speaker 1: and Casey, you were mentioning off air that some of
22:12
Speaker 1: your friends from different parts of the world find squirrels
22:15
Speaker 1: a little bit what spooky?
22:16
Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess. I mean it's hard to imagine as
22:19
Speaker 3: an American who's been seeing them their whole life, but yeah,
22:23
Speaker 3: if you're not used to it, apparently they can be
22:24
Speaker 3: quite upsetting.
22:25
Speaker 1: I'll tell you know, as I was looking through the
22:28
Speaker 1: differences of ground squirrels and tree squirrels, I feel like
22:32
Speaker 1: I ran into squirrels before what ground squirrels before? Once
22:37
Speaker 1: long ago, and it creeped me out because I saw
22:40
Speaker 1: them crawling on the ground, you know, like belly on
22:44
Speaker 1: the ground, and I thought they had had their I
22:47
Speaker 1: thought they had their backs broken or something, until I
22:50
Speaker 1: realized they were just that's just their method of locomotion.
22:53
Speaker 1: This was in Arizona, So those may not have been
22:56
Speaker 1: ground squirrels. Oh no, right in and let let us
22:58
Speaker 1: know what those weird little rodents were. We see the
23:02
Speaker 1: prejudice against ground squirrels continuing today. There was a University
23:08
Speaker 1: of California web page about damage caused by ground squirrels,
23:12
Speaker 1: and it featured an image of a squirrel wearing a
23:15
Speaker 1: helmet and aiming at the ground with a bazooka. So
23:21
Speaker 1: there is still a problem, and it is true, as
23:24
Speaker 1: strange as it may sound, California did indeed recruit child
23:28
Speaker 1: soldiers to wage war on ground.
23:31
Speaker 2: Squirrels, but they weren't the first or the last to
23:34
Speaker 2: launch a tactical strike like this against these pasts. In
23:39
Speaker 2: eighteen ninety seven, according to the same author as the
23:43
Speaker 2: Atlas Obscure piece, in an interview he did with The
23:45
Speaker 2: Washington Post, The Washington Post in fact, published a report
23:50
Speaker 2: citing that thirty US states offered quote unquote bounties for
23:55
Speaker 2: troublesome animals, including like panthers, the sinister ground score of course,
24:00
Speaker 2: pocket gophers, woodchucks, English sparrows, and wolves. So this was
24:06
Speaker 2: definitely a thing that there was a precedent for, and
24:10
Speaker 2: Pennsylvania paid out around ninety thousand dollars in bounties for
24:16
Speaker 2: chicken hawks. And this is really interesting because the Post wrote, quote,
24:19
Speaker 2: it appears that Pennsylvania expended ninety thousand dollars in destroying
24:24
Speaker 2: birds worth three million, eight hundred and fifty seven, two
24:28
Speaker 2: hundred and thirty dollars for the sake of saving one thousand,
24:31
Speaker 2: eight hundred and seventy five dollars to the poultry interest.
24:34
Speaker 2: What they mean by that is that these very same
24:36
Speaker 2: birds were actually killing thousands of mice each hawk one
24:41
Speaker 2: thousand mice in a year's time, and then these were
24:44
Speaker 2: very injurious to crops. So the math wasn't quite working
24:47
Speaker 2: out there.
24:47
Speaker 1: Right, because it's I think at the time it was
24:50
Speaker 1: easy to forget how complex and interlinked every organism in
24:56
Speaker 1: an ecosystem is. It's sort of tough to figure out
24:59
Speaker 1: who the real hope it may be, and it's even
25:01
Speaker 1: more difficult to figure out what the long term ramifications
25:05
Speaker 1: of an eradication campaign will be in the future. However, today,
25:10
Speaker 1: if you are a school child listening to this and
25:13
Speaker 1: you are anxious to join in a murderous campaign against
25:19
Speaker 1: one type of animal or another, we have some tough
25:23
Speaker 1: news for you. Nowadays, these sorts of expeditions are left
25:28
Speaker 1: to professional exterminators, and as a matter of fact, in
25:32
Speaker 1: many states, a common pest may be protected under law.
25:37
Speaker 1: So to bring it all back around to the example
25:40
Speaker 1: we had from super producer Casey Pegram Casey, I imagine
25:45
Speaker 1: your family was not allowed to kill the bats.
25:48
Speaker 2: Is that correct?
25:49
Speaker 3: That is correct, although maybe I shouldn't tell this part
25:52
Speaker 3: of the story, but said bat in the attic caught
25:56
Speaker 3: my mom off guard and she kind of swung at
25:58
Speaker 3: it and happened to kill the poor thing. So I
26:01
Speaker 3: believe the rest were safely loaded out of the attic.
26:05
Speaker 3: We had pest control person come over, and I think
26:09
Speaker 3: they were able to shepherd them out without costing any
26:12
Speaker 3: more bad lives.
26:13
Speaker 1: Casey on the Case, Casey on the Case. And this
26:18
Speaker 1: concludes today's episode, but not our show. Tune in for
26:23
Speaker 1: our next episode, when we explore a surprising opinion about
26:29
Speaker 1: Confederate memorials. Is that giving away too much?
26:31
Speaker 3: No?
26:32
Speaker 2: Nope, nope.
26:32
Speaker 1: Okay, there we go, So thanks so much for tuning in.
26:36
Speaker 1: We would love to hear your infestation stories. We would
26:39
Speaker 1: like to hear about the common pest in your neck
26:42
Speaker 1: of the global woods that seem normal to you but
26:45
Speaker 1: amazing to outsiders. For instance, this is true, you guys,
26:50
Speaker 1: a lot of people in Australia hate kangaroos.
26:53
Speaker 2: Did you know that?
26:54
Speaker 1: I think they're so cool?
26:55
Speaker 2: Well, they're probably just tired of them because they're just
26:57
Speaker 2: popping out of the woodwork there and Australia, or maybe
27:01
Speaker 2: not right in, let us let us know. Are they
27:03
Speaker 2: really as prevalent as we've been led to believe from
27:05
Speaker 2: crocodile dun dfilms?
27:07
Speaker 1: Right? Right? Shall we travel down to Australia to encounter
27:11
Speaker 1: kangaroo's first hand? And you can write to us directly?
27:16
Speaker 1: But wait, dramatic SOUNDQ please, Casey, We have a new
27:24
Speaker 1: email address. Write to us at Ridiculous at iheartpodcastnetwork dot com.
27:31
Speaker 1: You can also find us on social media, right nol.
27:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, you sure can. We've got a pretty pop in
27:36
Speaker 2: Facebook group called the Ridiculous Historians, where all kinds of
27:39
Speaker 2: fun things are happening every day, and that is at
27:41
Speaker 2: the Ridiculous Historians on Facebook. You can also find us
27:44
Speaker 2: on Instagram, you know if you like, or you can
27:47
Speaker 2: find us personally where I am at Embryonic Insider.
27:50
Speaker 1: And I am in a burst of creativity at Ben Bolin.
27:54
Speaker 1: Thanks as always to super producer Casey Pegram, Thanks to
27:57
Speaker 1: Alex Williams who composed our track.
28:00
Speaker 2: Thanks to you, Ben Bolin for being the benniest Bolaniest
28:03
Speaker 2: pal I could ever hope for. We'll see you next time.
28:11
Speaker 2: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
28:15
Speaker 2: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.