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California Schoolchildren and the Great Squirrel War · Ridiculous History

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