Ep. 487: Render – Civil War Send Off: Snakes and Surrender

00:00:14
Speaker 1: My name is Clay Knucomb and this is a production of the Bear Grease podcast called The Bear Grease Render, where we render down, dive deeper, and look behind the scenes of the actual bear Grease podcast.

00:00:27
Speaker 2: Brought to you by to Covi’s Boots. I’m a cowboy.

00:00:30
Speaker 1: Boot man and I’ve been wearing to Covis for years with the most comfortable boot I’ve ever put on.

00:00:36
Speaker 2: Good boots for good times.

00:00:47
Speaker 1: We have a very distinguished guest with us today on the Bear Grease Render. He’s been here at least once, if not twice.

00:00:55
Speaker 2: We have just once.

00:00:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, we have the infinitoue Brad birch Field with us.

00:01:02
Speaker 3: Brad turning your mike up just a little bit for me like that.

00:01:06
Speaker 4: Hey, there we go.

00:01:08
Speaker 1: We’ve brought Brad in for multiple reasons. We have brought him in because of his incredible expertise on the American Civil War yep at number one, Professor Brad Birche number two. If you recognize the name Brad Birchfield from The Bear Griase Render, you will know that he is our resident snake Man. That’s right, and you probably can’t hear it, but within eighteen inches of my foot. There is the rattling of what is most likely a venomous rattler. We have a couple of snakes in here. We’re going to pull him out later. I’ve also got here Bear. John Neukom yep, see Bear.

00:01:53
Speaker 2: Good to be here.

00:01:54
Speaker 1: Josh Lambridge Spilmmaker. This is the final Bear Grease render on the American Civil War Summer, the finale. We did six episodes. I ran into a guy in the airport the other day that was like, hey, Clay Bear Gree Civil War summer, and he wanted to make bets that the Beargree Civil War Summer was gonna go like eight episodes. He was like, he gave me some terminology, gambling terminology for like over under, for if it’s gonna actually end. But I think we’ve done it because we had a surrender. I don’t know if you guys heard the war is over. They surrendered, you know, Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomatics Courthouse, which interestingly isn’t a courthouse.

00:02:48
Speaker 2: Did you know that, Brad? You knew that?

00:02:50
Speaker 1: And you were educated at an American public schools your parents were wasn’t your mama teacher or something?

00:02:59
Speaker 2: Your wife she taught you a lot.

00:03:02
Speaker 4: Yes, but uh yeah, the same guy’s house basically where you know he was at bull Run and the battles started there and it ended in his front yard.

00:03:10
Speaker 2: That was wild.

00:03:11
Speaker 4: Yeah.

00:03:12
Speaker 1: So and then uh, now bear you uh would you have known that that Appomattox courthouse was not actually a courthouse?

00:03:21
Speaker 2: No clue, Yeah, no clue at all.

00:03:23
Speaker 1: Okay, Well, we’re gonna, we’re gonna, we’re gonna talk about that. But there’s no way that I’m going any further than let’s look at these snakes.

00:03:33
Speaker 4: You want to look at snakes already?

00:03:35
Speaker 2: I mean, unless you’ve got to.

00:03:36
Speaker 4: Kind of feel like we need to build up and end with snakes. I don’t know.

00:03:40
Speaker 2: Could we guess what’s in there that we have a rough idea of one? Yes, you you are?

00:03:45
Speaker 3: They both venomous.

00:03:46
Speaker 4: They are both venomous.

00:03:47
Speaker 2: They’re both venomous. Yeah, Okay, is the one on the orange bucket, timber Rattler, the one in the red bucket Western Diamondback.

00:03:55
Speaker 4: No, you’re close, you’re half right, you on a copperhead?

00:04:00
Speaker 2: Yes, how many snakes do you have?

00:04:03
Speaker 4: I’m really not sure.

00:04:05
Speaker 3: He’s not an owner, he’s a guardian, that’s right.

00:04:08
Speaker 4: They tell me, they love me. I’ve got I think more than forty but less than fifty.

00:04:14
Speaker 2: You’re really not really sure. Yeah.

00:04:16
Speaker 4: So they all have names and scientific names. Okay, yeah, they’re not having like Larry and Steve and specimens.

00:04:23
Speaker 3: They’re specimens.

00:04:24
Speaker 1: Do you mind telling the story of the of the old snake that has since passed away?

00:04:32
Speaker 2: Oh, he’s right.

00:04:33
Speaker 4: Yeah. So on the original podcast, I brought the big timor rattlesnake and that was a doozy yeah, And that was over two years ago. And for whatever reason, he quit eating, which snakes do that sometimes, and then they’ll go off feed and they’ll come back on feed, and sometimes you can do little things. But everything I tried over this thing would not eat. But it was so massive that it survived. And again it is attributed to their incredible metabolism. But it survived twenty twenty seven months without a meal, So two years and two months.

00:05:05
Speaker 3: That is unbelievable. Wow, But it would dropt.

00:05:10
Speaker 2: The snake died of old age.

00:05:11
Speaker 4: That’s my assumption, because it was old. It was it was twenty five plus years old.

00:05:16
Speaker 2: Twenty five plus years.

00:05:17
Speaker 4: I had it for fifteen and I got it from the university. It was retired animal that they were using, and it was it was probably twenty years old up there, so I mean it may have been closer.

00:05:27
Speaker 1: So if you were walking out in the woods and you see a timber rattlesnake called up, that snake might have been laying there for two years. I mean it’s possible. I mean he probably would have moved.

00:05:39
Speaker 4: He probably moved, yeah, during cold season and stuff.

00:05:42
Speaker 1: I just think about an animal that just would have been right dormant. That was kind of the idea that they wouldn’t be hunting, and they obviously wouldn’t be moving around too much because they’re probably conserving energy. If they’re not writing for over two years.

00:05:54
Speaker 4: It would probably stay in their wintertime. Hibernaculum den hybernaculum, that’s the that’s the fancy word.

00:06:01
Speaker 1: Is that a snake word or is that an animal word.

00:06:03
Speaker 4: I think it’s a snake word. I don’t know though bears.

00:06:06
Speaker 1: Bears have a hybernacil be hibernate, but yeah, you would hear the term a den. It wouldn’t be a hibernaculum.

00:06:13
Speaker 4: Same thing with rattlesnakes, though we hear rattlesnake den, but it’s technically a hibernaculum.

00:06:17
Speaker 1: Well, is there a way to trace back who taught you this.

00:06:21
Speaker 4: Word of Probably doctor Steve bo Pray from the University of Arkansas. Okay, he’s fresh on my mind because I had dinner with him last night. But yeah, he taught me a lot of big words.

00:06:33
Speaker 1: And so you’re you are a You’re not a trained biologist, but you a degree biologist. Correct, you’re not a herpetologist.

00:06:43
Speaker 4: I’m gonna I’m gonna what.

00:06:45
Speaker 2: Does the degree even mean?

00:06:46
Speaker 3: Exactly?

00:06:47
Speaker 1: But you’ve been messing around with snake’s your whole life, and I mean you’re essentially a snake biologist.

00:06:52
Speaker 4: Yes, so yeah, I like to think I play one on the internet. But yeah, I’m a I’m an advanced snake enthusiast.

00:06:59
Speaker 2: I think would be a good.

00:07:01
Speaker 1: You know, you’re the most You’re the most normal advanced snake enthusiast I’ve ever been around. And to say you’re normal is a little bit of a you know, maybe a slide of words here, I’ll think. But I’ve been around some snake people.

00:07:17
Speaker 4: Yeah, I run across these same people in my little circles, run across or run with, well sometimes run with. Yeah, it just depends.

00:07:26
Speaker 2: But tell us about your trip to South America.

00:07:28
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, yeah, So I got to go to the Amazon rainforest back in February, which it turns out, and Peru they don’t have like a summer, winter spring. They have a rainy season or a dry season. And we were there during the rainy season, and we stayed I think we were like sixty something miles down the Amazon from a Ketos had a little research station and they have a generator there and they would run the generator twice a day so you could charge your phone. But like, no, no, yeah, it was a lot off the grid. Turns out as scared as most people are of snakes, I’m that way about spiders. And there are more spiders in the Pruven Jungle than you can You just can’t believe. And some of the guys I wait with there into spiders and stuff and so they were all excited, but I was pretty much terrified the entire time.

00:08:18
Speaker 2: I don’t particularly spiders Enema spiders. Yes.

00:08:22
Speaker 4: In fact, I won’t get into details on this, but all the listeners out there, if you’ll go to your phone and google wandering spider, wondering spider, it’s like one of the top three deadly spiders in the planet, I think, but it’s got a very strange venom. And uh, they’re I don’t say they’re aggressive, but they’re not. They’re kind of like a cotton mouth. They don’t attack you, but they don’t back down. I got you. If you run across one, they just kind of, you know, bow up at you. Are they big wou? Yeah? I would say three four inches across.

00:08:51
Speaker 2: That’s that’s a big spider.

00:08:52
Speaker 4: That spider.

00:08:53
Speaker 2: It’s a crazy spider.

00:08:55
Speaker 4: We can get to the Wikipedia and read that. And oh yeah, if you think it’s worth missing.

00:08:59
Speaker 2: There’s a bear.

00:08:59
Speaker 1: Just pull a picture on his phone of a giant or ragnet with two arms raised to the heavens, so like or you could call it like yeah, raised to the heavens, or like a referee calling for a field goal.

00:09:13
Speaker 4: Well, so we’re down there with a bunch of tree huggers for all practical purposes. So normally, like most people kill snakes, I will stomp a spider and get great joy in doing so. But I was like, I can’t really do this, you know, I’m down here. And so we had one that lived under our porch. We had these steps. It went up to our little thing called a tambo. It’s basically like a little Gilligan’s Island hunt and stilts. And at the bottom of the stairs there was a large, wondering spider that lived under the bottom stairs. And every night I would go out to go take a shower or something, and the spider would be there, just waiting, and he did not move, and we had to We figured out a way to manage it, but it was.

00:09:52
Speaker 3: Not pleasant, so killing him wasn’t an option.

00:09:54
Speaker 4: No, And one night lifted up toilt lid, big one in the toilet hanging out.

00:09:59
Speaker 2: No way, I bet you killed them.

00:10:00
Speaker 4: Nope, I just went to another toilet. No, I just abandoned ship. I mean these things they’re everywhere. And other spiders, like have you ever heard of a bird eating spider? No, it’s the largest spider, the lithe bird eater. Yes, we saw one of those.

00:10:13
Speaker 2: I want to know who came up with that name? I don’t know, And I think they should name more critters. I agree.

00:10:18
Speaker 4: There’s a glaugh grouper. Yeah, yeah, but we saw one of those guys, like it’s not a real big one, but it was literally probably eight ten inches across that’s terrifying. It was that a venomous spirab it’s a tarantula. I mean it’s it’s just it’s venomous, but it’s not deadly. Yeah, But like saying scorpions, they’ve got all those. I mean, so in my mind before we went, I was like, I’m gonna buy my shetty and take my bull whip because I do own some bull whips and uh.

00:10:46
Speaker 3: Doora, maybe’s not as normal as we think.

00:10:48
Speaker 4: I mean, chopping through the jungle having adventures. And when I got down there and saw where like underneath big leaves or be nests of wasps, oh, and then scorpions and then bullet ants, you’d be like enough against a tree and there’ll be a trailer bullet it. So literally I was walking, you know, yeah, as thinly as I could through the trails, just trying not to touch anything.

00:11:08
Speaker 2: It was terrifying.

00:11:09
Speaker 4: But we did find a bunch of snakes. We found, uh, I don’t know how many. I think total species list was of like one hundred and sixty different species of reptiles, amphibians and the ragnans and stuff. But we didn’t find the one snake that I wanted to find which is a bush master. It’s the largest venomous snake in this hemisphere, and it’s very interesting. It’s a pit viper, but it lays eggs. Most pit vipers have live birth.

00:11:35
Speaker 1: Yeah, so some snakes have live birth and some snakes well lay eggs.

00:11:40
Speaker 4: Technically, they have eggs in their belly and then they hatch out and then the live snake emerges from the they hatch hatch inside, but we call that live birth versus laying an egg and a banding it like most snakes do, and then those egg hatches itself. So wow, how.

00:11:56
Speaker 2: Big is a bush master?

00:11:57
Speaker 4: They can get eight to twelve feet, Oh my lord, and they’re real deadly, very very What was the chances of you seeing one? It was really high because this group that we went with has they do this every year, and they were I think fourteen of fourteen trips where they found a bush master and we broke that streak for him.

00:12:17
Speaker 2: Oh, massmaster.

00:12:18
Speaker 4: So I did find. The coolest thing I found was a six foot Peruvian boa bult constrictor, which as a kid, you know, I’d see these nast geographic and me and my son were walking and I was it was raining because it just comes its rainforest, so it rings and I stepped on something and because I was looking kind of at the periphery, I wasn’t looking right in front of me, and like I stepped in something kind of squished, and I looked down and there was a six foot bowl constrictor. I mean it looked like you know, a pet store. You know. It was just awesome to see a wild one and city strike at you. He was not pleasant. Yeah, it turns out they don’t like to be handled. I didn’t get bit, but had We had a good time trying to get it in a bag to show everybody else.

00:12:59
Speaker 1: So how so was this like a like an eco tour?

00:13:03
Speaker 4: Yeah, more or less.

00:13:04
Speaker 2: You picked up on the dark web or something that.

00:13:06
Speaker 4: Now I’ve got some friends some of these people, and they do have an eco tour thing there, and a lot of the money goes to purchase tracks of the rainforest so it doesn’t get cut down, and so they’re preserving habitat down there. So even in the Snake Realm, we’re big on public lands and saving habitat and all that kind of stuff too.

00:13:25
Speaker 1: So you’ve traveled all across the country here in America looking for snakes, like, you know, randomly, you’ll be somewhere and you’ll be like, yeah, I’m looking for this snake. You’re trying to check off a list, right seeing every species of snake in America pretty much or.

00:13:38
Speaker 4: In yeah, call America right now. Yeah, Actually, in Labor Day weekend, I’m going south of the border to look for the last rattlesnake. That is, the last US rattlesnake. It’s called a cradulous whittler dye obscurists. It’s the New Mexico original rattlesnake. And so they occur on two mountain ranges down kind of the Boothill area of New mex.

00:14:00
Speaker 2: But they’re now what border are you crossing? The Mexican one? So it’s in New Mexico though.

00:14:05
Speaker 4: Yeah. So there’s two places you can find them in the US, and they’re functionally extirpated from this range. There’s another range that you can’t get on because it’s owned by the Nature Conservancy and they do research on these, so they don’t want anybody in there messing with them. But across the border into Mexico they’re apparently common. So we’re hooking up with a guy that’s been several times, and he’s assured me everything’s good and safe, and so we’ll see.

00:14:28
Speaker 2: Okay, so when when are you doing that?

00:14:30
Speaker 4: It’d be Labor Day weekend.

00:14:31
Speaker 2: Labor Day weekend.

00:14:33
Speaker 4: Yeah, we’re gonna have a post mortem. If I get killed, say, we’re gonna have a moment of silence.

00:14:38
Speaker 1: I will dedicate an episode to you.

00:14:41
Speaker 2: Yeah, go get killed.

00:14:42
Speaker 4: Okay, but yeah we do. We chase a lot of a lot of different snakes in different areas, just like y’all do when you go hunting. You want to kill a baron basct.

00:14:49
Speaker 3: How many do you like in North America?

00:14:52
Speaker 4: Rattlesnakes?

00:14:52
Speaker 3: Just snakes?

00:14:53
Speaker 4: Oh, I wouldn’t have any idea.

00:14:55
Speaker 1: Oh so it’s not that’s not a goal. Then I kind of said that not a goal.

00:14:59
Speaker 4: Now the go is the rattlesnakes, the rattlesnakes.

00:15:02
Speaker 3: How many rattlesnakes are there?

00:15:03
Speaker 4: Uh? Good, you put me on spot here. I want to say forty? Wow, that many things.

00:15:09
Speaker 1: They’re rattlesnakes and other continents.

00:15:12
Speaker 4: Yes, South America has the it’s a new world thing. Yes, really Yeah, that’s a great segue into.

00:15:23
Speaker 2: My wow flag.

00:15:25
Speaker 4: So we were talking about the Civil War. Eventually this actually comes from revolutionary.

00:15:30
Speaker 3: We’ll hand that other aside to Clay.

00:15:33
Speaker 1: Let me see here, Okay, get it all on the screen here.

00:15:35
Speaker 4: This is what is known as the gads And Battle flag. It’s made by a dude that was in the navy, and it’s got a rattlesnake on it that says, don’t tread on me. It’s got thirteen segments on his rattle to signify the thirteen colonies. And again this is Clay said, rattlesnakes are a new world thing. They don’t have these in Europe, so no one in Europe had ever seen these. And they come over here and they got this crazy snake that can kill you that has rattles on them. So Benjamin Franklin was big on writing stuff. I’m gonna reata.

00:16:04
Speaker 1: We can just drape this over the siddle here.

00:16:06
Speaker 4: Yeah, so get up my cheaters here.

00:16:11
Speaker 2: Wow.

00:16:13
Speaker 4: So this was Benjamin Franklin wrote this in seventeen fifty five or something like that. Says, I recollected that her eye excelled in brightness that of any other animal, and that she has no eyelids. She may therefore be esteemed an emblem of vigilance. She never begins an attack, nor when engaged ever surrenders. She is therefore an emblem of magnanimity and true courage. As if anxious to prevent all pretensions of quarreling with her, the weapons with which nature has furnished her she conceals in the roof of her mouth, so that those who are unacquainted with her, she appears to be most defenseless. And even when those weapons are shown and extended for her defense, they appear weak and contemptible. But their wounds, however small, are decisive and fatal. Conscious of this, she never wounds till she has generally given notice even to her enemy, and cautioned him against the danger of treading on her. So I thought that was a really interesting writing Ben Franklin talking about the timber rattlesnake, because this is the same rattlesnake that we have here in the Ozarks. They have in the northeast, they range up into New York Pennsylvania, And like I said, it was a good symbol to kind of explain the the deal to England at times like don’t you know, don’t mess.

00:17:34
Speaker 2: With us, or they’ll be tread on. The high price to be paid yeah, in interesting.

00:17:39
Speaker 4: There you go.

00:17:40
Speaker 2: I was good.

00:17:40
Speaker 4: How about that?

00:17:41
Speaker 2: That was that was really good?

00:17:42
Speaker 4: Yep, okay, So I’m gonna open this okay.

00:17:45
Speaker 1: Oh yikes, look at that guy.

00:17:51
Speaker 4: I’ll use this thing here.

00:17:54
Speaker 2: Okay.

00:17:54
Speaker 1: So, so Brad has a five gallon bucket and he’s opened the bucket and in the bucket is a very it’s a good sized smokes timber rattler that he has put on a floor in the office right next to our feet.

00:18:12
Speaker 3: Wow. Wow, he’s got a heck of a rattle, doesn’t he.

00:18:15
Speaker 1: Where’s my where’s my phone at?

00:18:17
Speaker 2: There?

00:18:17
Speaker 4: It is?

00:18:18
Speaker 1: Okay, So there’s a there’s a timber rattler on the floor.

00:18:23
Speaker 3: We can get it.

00:18:24
Speaker 2: And they still how old would you say? That snake is? Brad?

00:18:28
Speaker 4: This snake is probably five or six years old to be my guess. Wow, it’s definitely.

00:18:34
Speaker 2: You better get out the way. Be really still.

00:18:37
Speaker 3: I’m gonna stand real close to Brad because he’s.

00:18:39
Speaker 1: Got I’ve got my boots on, so I’m probably okay. There’s probably okay, you’re probably okay, bear, you’re not okay?

00:18:47
Speaker 4: Now, So this is the same snake that they were seeing, and it’s on that flag. And again, as you can see. She’s really not too aggressive or striky. It’s a female, I think, so this one is. And now it’s gonna take off and vanish somewhere.

00:19:07
Speaker 2: Better seriously move.

00:19:11
Speaker 4: Sometimes it’s easier just to grab one by the tail.

00:19:15
Speaker 1: Oh my lord, Brad, Wow, okay, we’re app We’re completely wrangling this snake.

00:19:20
Speaker 3: We’re wrapped up in wires here.

00:19:22
Speaker 4: Okay, so now we can kind of control it.

00:19:25
Speaker 1: So she’s i’d say, is she four foot long?

00:19:28
Speaker 2: Four and a half foot long?

00:19:30
Speaker 4: Probably close?

00:19:30
Speaker 3: Why where’d you get her?

00:19:32
Speaker 4: Uh? This was actually a Arkansas game and fish caused me now to do removals and actually kind of a wayward home for ownerless snakes. The owner of the snake apparently committed a crime and is going to spend some time at a state facility, and they wanted the snake gone, and so I ended up with it. But now this is going to be the one I use in my snake programs.

00:19:54
Speaker 2: Nice.

00:19:55
Speaker 4: But as you can see, when.

00:19:57
Speaker 3: You say snake programs, what do you mean?

00:19:58
Speaker 4: I do educational program for schools and boy Scouts?

00:20:02
Speaker 3: And how many students have you lost?

00:20:05
Speaker 4: We’ve never had a problem yet, but you know, there’s always that.

00:20:07
Speaker 1: So this snake looks really bright, the skin looks really.

00:20:11
Speaker 4: Yeah, it just shed recently?

00:20:13
Speaker 2: Did it just shed?

00:20:15
Speaker 3: How often do they shed?

00:20:16
Speaker 4: It depends on how much they eat in captivity. With the way I feed these about once every month, it’ll shed.

00:20:22
Speaker 3: Oh really that often month?

00:20:24
Speaker 4: Yeah? Yeah, I get them on a pretty regular eating schedule in the summertime, and then like say, in the wintertime, they go off feet.

00:20:30
Speaker 1: That snake has a bunch of rattles. One’t have that many.

00:20:35
Speaker 4: Not usually. Usually they’re going to break off. They crawl around and rocks and stuff, and they get brittle and they’ll break. But in captivity they just usually retain them. And it’s funny because some species. I’ve got this big diamondback that I brought last time, and it loses rattles all the time, so it doesn’t have a very big string of rattles. But the snake itself is almost six foot long.

00:20:56
Speaker 1: So you had to go out and get this snake from this person’s house. Yes, can you tell us about that?

00:21:04
Speaker 4: It was a little sketchy the house. If I was a snake, that’s probably where I would have stayed because there was a lot of junk ling around, a lot of car hoods and overturned and shed and you sort of a lot of stuff to hide under. And this one he had built a big box in the back of the trailer house and had like a glass door as a lid, and so he had this big box with us in it in the copper head.

00:21:28
Speaker 2: Mmm.

00:21:29
Speaker 4: So but the uh, I guess the people that own it did not want the snake. So here we are. Wow, it doesn’t like the bucket. I’ve noticed some snakes go right in the bucket, some don’t care for it.

00:21:48
Speaker 2: He doesn’t like the bucket, stay in there. And you’ve never been bitten by a poisonous snake?

00:21:56
Speaker 4: No, no, I’m pretty careful.

00:22:00
Speaker 2: Okay, that was snake.

00:22:02
Speaker 4: So now everybody’s heart rates on.

00:22:05
Speaker 3: You know.

00:22:06
Speaker 2: So okay, So when.

00:22:09
Speaker 1: When people are around equine animals, when I first started being around mules and horses a lot, I was very conscious of being behind them for getting kicked because Juju Nukeom told us about well, we knew a girl from my hometown that got kicked in the face. She was about my age and really really hurt or bad, and so Juju Nukem was worried about getting lockjaw from rusty things, falling through ice, kidnappers and getting kicked by horses and for with the recks. Those were the big fears that we had. But now that I’ve been around equine animals a lot, I’m not really that worried about getting kicked by them.

00:22:56
Speaker 2: I just kind of you know, you just kind of.

00:22:58
Speaker 4: Understand understand body language, body language.

00:23:01
Speaker 1: Yeah, it’s the same way with snakes. Like you’re very comfortable with it, and uh and and like I’m I’m maybe more comfortable than some because I handle a snake or two, but it’s still like, hey man, that’s way too close.

00:23:16
Speaker 3: Yeah, have you had any close calls.

00:23:19
Speaker 2: I actually think Brad’s just reckless.

00:23:21
Speaker 4: Yeah, we could say that, uh the never. It’s funny you say that, though, because I’ve noticed, like with my non venous snakes, same thing always equated to like a horse, a horse can tell when you’re nervous. You get on a horse and you’re nervous, the horse is going nervous. Snakes are the same way like my non venous snakes. If you just reach in them, grab them, just nonchalantly, just open the cage and pick them up. Fine, But if you go slow and you think well, I’ll just act make my hand and let it bam. You’ll get bit really every time?

00:23:49
Speaker 1: Yeah, what are the chances you could just reach in that bucket and pick that Oh no.

00:24:00
Speaker 4: Not going to find out.

00:24:02
Speaker 2: Okay, what do we say?

00:24:03
Speaker 4: This is just a copper head?

00:24:04
Speaker 2: Oh good, you know what.

00:24:06
Speaker 1: I’m glad you brought a copperhead. I actually thought about telling you to bring one.

00:24:10
Speaker 4: Hopefully these this will be more calm. This one tesfully.

00:24:16
Speaker 1: So we have We’ve got a nice, probably thirty inch long copper head.

00:24:23
Speaker 4: So the reason I brought the copperhead, I’m not sure if you’re aware of the copperhead movement in the Civil War? Ooh oh do you remember in the eighties there was a commercial for time Life’s books on the Civil War and there was the Old West. Well, I remember the Civil War one. It always said the copperheads and I was like, what is that? So w I went to college, had to do a paper and they’re like, what subject do you want to do this on? I was like the copper heads because I’m thinking it’s got to be some like mercenary band of bad guys that are you know. It turns out it was just some peace Democrats that didn’t want to find the war and they called them the copperheads. I was very disappointed, but they were very anti war. And basically it’s kind of started up in the Ohio River Valley area and I think they ran a guy for president or maybe vice president with McClellan, but didn’t really gain much traction. And that was the copperhead movement. And that was interesting though. There was a case where there was a mail bag that came from one of the states that had succeeded and they opened it and it had a box in it. The box hit the floor and busted open and there were copperheads in it, two copperheads that they quickly dispatched, and so that kind of got tied in that they thought, you know, maybe these guys had done this or something. But anyway, little anecdotal story.

00:25:52
Speaker 1: It’s the range of the copperhead.

00:25:53
Speaker 4: Copperheads or they have a huge range. They’ve ranged from West Texas all the way to east coast up into New York. This scientists change things all the time. We now have an eastern copperhead and a broadband and copperhead. I can’t remember, but they basically split them. Used to be split up into a northern coperhead, a Southern coperhead, a Transpacos copperhead, a broadband and copperhead. But now they’ve kind of lumped them all together. So this is basically an eastern copperhead. Is what they call this MM is a copperhead, a pit viper, it is.

00:26:29
Speaker 1: What’s the most interesting thing about this, like the copperhead, how they make a living, what they do where they live.

00:26:34
Speaker 4: Yeah, they’re just really good at pest control. They eat warm blooded prey, the lead mice and rats and you know, ground squirrels and stuff, and a lot of people like I can get on a rant here about all these hunters and conservationists that love the stuff and then they go out and they see a snake crossing road and they get out and beat it to death with the rock. Yes, And I just can’t get my head wrapped around that, because these guys do a lot of good. They eat squirrels and rats and stuff that have ticks and ticks cary tick borne illnesses. And interesting about copperheads, they have a component in their venom that they found out has a very powerful treatment against breast cancer cells. Really, and like I say this is the redneck version. Basically, the cell it stops up to sell the cancer cell on both ends, so it can’t get rid of waste and kills the cell. Unlike luke or what do you call the radiation stuff chemotherapy therapy where it attacks the whole body and you know, wrecks your whole system and the cancer cells. This is a very specific thing that only affects the cancer cells. But what they found is the component that venom in the venom is so small and minute that it would take you know, every copperhead in the Southeast United States to create a dose of this that would work. And so they’re now they’re working with the bioscience people trying to come up with a synthetic version of it. So the copperhead may be the cute, you know, one of the things that helps cure breast cancer.

00:28:00
Speaker 2: Interesting.

00:28:00
Speaker 4: Yeah, they beautiful. See they have a place. And like I say, I tell people, like the best, the only dangerous snake out there is the one you’re messing with if you just leave them alone. Yeah, like this one. But you know, if you see a snake, just leave it alone, It’ll go about its business. Now I get it. If you know it’s crossed upon your porch and you’ve got a three year old that runs around. I understand that kind of stuff, and that stuff happens, but the vast majority I just get sick because my Facebook feed, you know, I see a lot of people with their prize and they’ve killed a big rattlesnake and I’m like, the poor snake was just out there and just had to be crossing the road or you know. And these guys with deer feeders put their deer feeder out and attract squirrels of nice and that’s what these guys eat, So they go their deer feeder, like this rattlesnake was waiting to get somebody. It’s like, no, the rattle snake just figured out there was an easy place to get a meal, and so best just left alone. But copperheads one of them, Like I say, they’re so common, they’re just you bickoed us here and uh but it’s just one of the most beautiful snakes. I think they just love it.

00:29:01
Speaker 1: How many copperheads do you think are within three hundred feet of us right now?

00:29:08
Speaker 4: Probably a couple of dozen at really, Oh yeah you think so? Oh yeah, let me tell you this Brett. We’re at the global headquarters here and I can count on one hand the number of times in twenty years that I’ve seen a copperhead on this property.

00:29:26
Speaker 2: Yeah, what does that mean?

00:29:27
Speaker 4: They’re very good at hiding, very Uh what did you call bears crepuscular?

00:29:33
Speaker 2: Crepuscular?

00:29:33
Speaker 4: They are very crepuscular, so they’re just.

00:29:35
Speaker 2: Not out during the daytime.

00:29:37
Speaker 4: They just hang out.

00:29:37
Speaker 1: The puscular means cracka dawn and in the evening, right, so they’re nocturnal more, is that what you say?

00:29:45
Speaker 4: Yes, okay, And like I say, they’re very camouflaged and they don’t require much so you don’t see them out.

00:29:51
Speaker 1: So you do think that there’s a bunch around here even though I’m not seeing them.

00:29:55
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, And like say, they keep things in check, like you know, chipmunks, little ground squirrels and stuff like that. But they on eat frogs and stuff like that too. They’re pretty optimistic.

00:30:06
Speaker 3: Would that snake strike only if it was feeling threatened?

00:30:11
Speaker 4: Yeah, so right.

00:30:13
Speaker 3: Now, I mean, if we didn’t make any sudden movements.

00:30:15
Speaker 4: Or you could crawl over your feet, it wouldn’t care. But if you reach down and grab it, then it’s gonna be like, whoa, what’s that? Probably turn around a strike. Yeah, they’re very deceiving. They like to lull you into a oh, this one’s not very body. You have to fight that urge to pick them up, because yes, it can end badly.

00:30:32
Speaker 2: Do you think snakes have feeling?

00:30:35
Speaker 4: I don’t know. That is a good question. Do snakes go to heaven?

00:30:43
Speaker 1: I’m misty Misty Nukem who tries to convince me even though it’s not biblical, there may be some biblical loopholes about animals in the next dimension. She’s like, I think dogs probably probably are up there. I’m gonna be like, well, if dogs are there, snakes are there.

00:30:59
Speaker 4: Yeah, that’s right.

00:31:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, but there might be some biblical loopholes in that, now that I think about it exactly.

00:31:07
Speaker 4: But yeah, they’re they’re very common. And like I say, these are they’re not considered mildly venomous. But if you’re gonna get bit by something venous, this.

00:31:14
Speaker 2: Is the one one.

00:31:15
Speaker 1: This is the snake that I envision if I were bit by a snake, this is probably what it is.

00:31:23
Speaker 4: Yeah, these are probably the crew account And what would be your symptoms? You would burning sensation, to you know, hold out the bite at the bat side. Yeah, that’s very well up common with pit viprum venomations. Yeah, a lot of pain at the baite side, a lot of swelling and uh, basically what happens is that the venom breaks down the red blood seals ability to carry oxygen, so you kind of have some you know, some respiratory side effects and uh.

00:31:50
Speaker 1: Oh really so if you if he bits you on the ankle, you might have a hard time breathing.

00:31:54
Speaker 4: You’re gonna, yeah, probably have some trouble, you know.

00:31:56
Speaker 5: And would they administer anti venom for a for a copper head bite.

00:32:00
Speaker 4: Yeah, definitely, And yeah, it depends on severity of the bite. What all do you usually do is monitor you for They’re supposed to monitor you for eight hours to make sure the venom’s not progressing because it’ll start swelling and they can mark you know how.

00:32:12
Speaker 1: Now would probably be one that would be like, oh, it’s not that big a deal to get bit by a copper head.

00:32:19
Speaker 4: If it was a copperhead, I might attempt to write it out unless I thought it was severe enough that it was gonna you know.

00:32:27
Speaker 1: Is that something that could backfire on you though?

00:32:29
Speaker 2: It could.

00:32:29
Speaker 1: Yeah, like just all of a sudden, you just go downhill.

00:32:32
Speaker 4: The the phrase is time is tissue. So the longer you go before you get anti venom, the more tissue damage that could occur. But you know, like say so many times snake bites and like I say, there’s not really a you know, uh in stone formula for this, but like you know, if you just surprise the thing, like if I reached down and picked up the snake and it bit me, it’s not that it’s not agitated. It may just be a hey, leave me alone, and he may not inject any venom. All dry bite might be a dry bite. It might just be you know, slight, so that’s possible a dry by. They could strike you and not inject any venom. Yeah, yeah, they can control the amount of venom that they release. But if it’s you know, agitated, or if it’s stepped on or you know, then it may be really upset and really sock it to you. But you’d be able to pretty much tell.

00:33:22
Speaker 1: And you’ve never been bit by venom, not.

00:33:25
Speaker 4: By venomous No, No, it’s uh, like I say, it’s one of those deals where you know, if you play with fire you’re probably gonna get burned at some point, so I mean, I’m ready to accept responsibility for that. But I do everything I can to midicate it, you know, using tools instead of my hands, and bring them in buckets instead of bags. You know, there’s a lot of safety things you can do. And like I say, I work with these guys in my snake room all the time, so I kind of understand their body language and stuff. So very interesting animals, highly underrated.

00:33:56
Speaker 2: I know a guy who is shooting his trid bow, missed the target, went under the target to grab his arrow, got bit by a copperhead, and he went to the hospital and they just had him wait there for eight hours, I guess. And he said it swoll up all the way to his shoulder.

00:34:14
Speaker 4: Yeah.

00:34:14
Speaker 2: That they never they never gave him any any venom. That’s interesting, and it can swell down and he has some kind of nerve damage on his finger. But oh really, yeah, for the most part, it is all right.

00:34:25
Speaker 4: Yeah, And that’s the thing with doctors. I mean, they cover this, I’m sure in one class for one test, but they’re not familiar with dealing with snake bite. So a lot of doctors are kind of like right, they’re probably looking, you know, they’re going to google and how to treat snake bite. Yeah, exactly, that kind of stuff because they just haven’t treat them. There’s a couple of guys that that do that have a Facebook page called the National Snake Bite Support Website and it’s very fascinating cause it’s only it’s controlled by doctors and you can’t comment. You can just see what if you have a live bite situation, people will send them a message and then they’ll tell them what to do and tell the doctors. Do you know if they if they’re not if they feel like they’re not getting treatment, Like the guy you’re talking about probably should have been ad Minister Danti Vinam if they if the swelling progressed that much, somebody should have been like, okay, yeah, that’s a that’s a pretty solid invenomation.

00:35:12
Speaker 2: Brad.

00:35:13
Speaker 1: These we forgot to mention that you’re in the toa covi’s hot seat.

00:35:17
Speaker 4: Yes give us indeed or not?

00:35:19
Speaker 1: These these to COVID’s boots right here. Uh, they’re on the the the rough, outside.

00:35:29
Speaker 2: The leather.

00:35:30
Speaker 1: What are the chances he bites me and it goes through that?

00:35:33
Speaker 4: Not at all?

00:35:34
Speaker 1: Yeah, so those are going to be snakes. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, if you’re certain of that.

00:35:38
Speaker 4: Yep.

00:35:39
Speaker 1: What are the chances that he would bite me above the boot?

00:35:43
Speaker 4: You know, I want to say seventy percent. Doesn’t say thirty. Yeah, I’d say seventy they don’t. Yeah.

00:35:48
Speaker 1: So these are just standard sized boots and there’s a chance that that he he could bite me up that high.

00:35:58
Speaker 2: Is that what you’re saying?

00:35:59
Speaker 4: Good a snake that sass could but it would be an odd thing.

00:36:03
Speaker 1: He would probably strike you like there, but you would feel like one hundred percent like he is not going to bite through that leather.

00:36:11
Speaker 3: No.

00:36:13
Speaker 1: Whenever we well, it’s interesting that you say that because you’re gonna get a pair of Ta Cos boots which we have here and we would like for you to put them on. Let that snake bite joke you he is going to get it to got to tell you that, No, you get a pair of Co’s boots.

00:36:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, we forgot to tell you that we.

00:36:37
Speaker 5: Have a great partnership with the Covis and for being our guests, you will get a pair of boots from them.

00:36:42
Speaker 2: Awesome. Okay, Well, thank you, Brad. You told me a story. Whenever we were snaking last year about maybe it was one of your buddies or something who had a rattlesnake tripped on a green brier through it.

00:36:57
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, buddy of mine did get infentimated by a large Western diamondback finnomated.

00:37:01
Speaker 1: That’s like her hybernaculum. Yeah, snake guys trying to impress us.

00:37:07
Speaker 4: Yeah, one of my best friends did get bitten by a large rattlesnake and it went south very quickly. Yeah. Uh yeah, long story short. He got bit and it didn’t look like it wasn’t.

00:37:18
Speaker 2: Too tell us a little bit about how he got bit. I mean, well kind of just did.

00:37:22
Speaker 4: I wasn’t there. I was up above, So, like I said, this is just kind of really he had a rattlesnake there that he didn’t see, and he was looking at another one, and he came around this rock and it was right there, and it he went to move and gut in some green briers and it struck and only one thing hit his leg about right here, which again, so then.

00:37:44
Speaker 1: It was a snake. He should have known was there or y’all were looking for snake. He had one, Yeah, and it just happened to be there was another one.

00:37:52
Speaker 4: There was another one. Yeah, and everybody says, oh, they traveling pairs. They don’t traveling pairs. This was at a den sight where we would expect to see Mont. So anyway, the snake bites him and we all were like that I wasn’t there. I was thirty yards away, and so we all rushed down there.

00:38:08
Speaker 2: It counts as you being there.

00:38:09
Speaker 4: Brad pretty close and he said, I don’t think it bit me. It’s not burning or anything. And we’re like, we’ll pull up your leg, your pant leg, and he did, and there was a very little slit. It looks like, you know, a brier scratched him, and I mean it wasn’t two fang marks, you know, it wasn’t a traditional looking snake bait. And we were just kind of looked at it, and then you start seeing the blood started to drip out of it, and it looked like diluted red kool aid. It was like really thin, and so we’re like, yeah, you got some venom and he’s like, well, it doesn’t burn, it doesn’t hurt. And at this point, you know, we’ve done this stuff. We knew to get to the hospital. So we had about a probably three hundred yard four hundred or walk down a hill to get to my truck, and then we took off and called nine to one one, and as luck would have it, there was an ambulance that just went back really and they stopped and he was in the hospital from the time he got bitten. He was in the hospital probably twenty minutes later. So as far as a snake big goes, that’s like best case scenario. And of course I couldn’t go back in the emergency room. So I was in the waiting room and the nurse said, you know, you know, we’re gonna take care of him. You just wait out here and get his insurance stuff and all that. So I’m waiting around and so I call his wife and I’m like, hey, a little accident today. What you’ve been worrying about all these years is finally come to Fruition.

00:39:28
Speaker 5: Find out snaking with with Brad’s you come. And my wife gets a call from Brad. She knows something’s up.

00:39:34
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, and I said, don’t think it’s that bad. We got in the hospital. Everything’s, you know, as good as it could be. And I hung up, and she was a ways away and she was going to make her way there and then the nurse comes as he say, we’re we’re going to life like him to Tulsa, and I’m like, oh, oh, okay, And so yeah, I got to call her back and say, well, actually it’s a little worse. It’s a little worse than we thought. But he spent three I think three, and ICU and Tulsa got multiple doses of anti venom, which shows to me, if you got bit by one of these big rattlesnakes and got a good two fangs into the muscle, it might have ended a lot differently. But yeah, it was touching go there for a little.

00:40:14
Speaker 3: Bit of a big snake.

00:40:15
Speaker 4: It was about a five foot diamondback rattle snake.

00:40:17
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was.

00:40:19
Speaker 1: Is a diamondbacks venom different than a timber rattler?

00:40:22
Speaker 2: It is.

00:40:24
Speaker 4: It causes more tissue destruction and probably more of the antiquaglant than the blood and you know that kind of stuff. And the amount is the big issue. You know a lot of people say baby snakes are more venous than and the babies can’t control their venom. All that’s complete bunk. Yeah, the only thing that really matters is how big the snake is. And this one was a big its head was big as my fist. Wow, So it got you know, and like I say, the wound it made it must have just been a you know, very minute amount, but it’s that potent.

00:40:58
Speaker 2: And it put him in ic for the it is it was. It was scary.

00:41:01
Speaker 4: But timber Rattler has a neurotoxin right, right, They have some neuro toxic yes, yeah, they have some different stuff. The neural toxins affect your nervous system obviously, and like it’s a lot of the respiratory stuff, like it’ll just you it’ll send a message that says, you know, die, frame quit working and then you can’t breathe or kidney shut down. You know, there’s a lot of a lot of other stuff with tim rout So really, you know, what’s the most dangerous snake out there, Well, it’s the one you’re messing with. But if I was gonna get bit by something, snake at our feet.

00:41:31
Speaker 3: Exactly for the last fifteen minutes, we.

00:41:33
Speaker 1: Are all dancing within the timber rattlesnake in half of itches is wing to the hospital except for those of us wearing that’s right.

00:41:43
Speaker 5: And his nikes there for a disaster and Brad.

00:41:50
Speaker 1: Why does a timber rattler or a diamondback need that high potency venom to kill a squirrel.

00:41:57
Speaker 4: Just so they don’t have to chase it down and waste energy? Oh, I got you. It’s just depends on, you know, the size of their food. And like I said, big diamondbacks when they eat big things like big squirrels, like a big fox squirrel, and that’s gonna take a little more.

00:42:09
Speaker 2: And remember the video.

00:42:11
Speaker 1: I believe I sent it to you, I may have posted it. It was two falls ago.

00:42:16
Speaker 2: I was.

00:42:17
Speaker 1: It was in October, and I came across a big coiled timber rattler as big as the one you just pulled out, and it had eaten a squirrel and was so immobilized it could hardly move.

00:42:32
Speaker 4: Yeah, because they digest so slowly. If they eat a big meal like that really puts them in danger because they can’t really crawl off and hide somewhere. They just had to kind of lay there until they digested enough to be able to move.

00:42:42
Speaker 2: So that was pretty neat.

00:42:43
Speaker 4: Yeah, that was a cool video.

00:42:45
Speaker 2: It was.

00:42:46
Speaker 1: I mean, you could tell you could just almost you could all but snake you saw. Yeah, Yeah, you could all but see, you know, like the squirrel’s paws, like I mean, just like the snake was shaped like a squirrel.

00:42:57
Speaker 3: You know, how often will a snake eat a meal like that?

00:43:00
Speaker 4: They’re going to be opportunistic as many times as they can. They’re kind of like a bear. They try to get as many calories they can during this season so they can overwinter, you know, you.

00:43:07
Speaker 1: Know, but they could live off if maybe they just caught one one thing a year.

00:43:12
Speaker 4: Yeah. With doctor bo Prey up at the university, they had an animal at their study site in Madison County was a timberrettlesnake and it ate a single squirrel in a calendar year one meal, So I mean, and it was absolutely fine. Yeah, I didn’t lose any mass.

00:43:25
Speaker 5: It was just Yeah, the snake that you lost that didn’t eat, he clearly lost some mass eventually.

00:43:30
Speaker 4: Yeah, And like I said, I’d assume his body was just consuming itself over that time. But but yeah, very interesting.

00:43:37
Speaker 3: This this one will also eat roadent some Yeah.

00:43:40
Speaker 4: I feed this one nice that are pre frozen often.

00:43:42
Speaker 2: You feed this one.

00:43:43
Speaker 4: About once every two weeks.

00:43:44
Speaker 1: It’s a frozen it’s a it doesn’t have to be alive. No, you just drop it in there and he just throws the town yep.

00:43:51
Speaker 4: Which is funny because you know, the in addition to the venom being used to kill the prey at them, it’s also a digestive thing. It kind of starts jesting it from the inside out. So technically it’s probably better if it strikes the prey at them and gets that venom inside of it, because it starts breaking down the inside of the mouse, and then when he swallows it, he goes through his gi quicker like say, so it can be back on the move.

00:44:14
Speaker 3: So he will strike a frozen mouse.

00:44:17
Speaker 4: Uh if I dangle it in there and go make little sounds.

00:44:20
Speaker 2: Yeah, like what happens if you don’t make the sounds.

00:44:24
Speaker 3: I like a video that next time you’re doing that.

00:44:27
Speaker 4: Sometimes I drop him in there and they just kind of look at him and they crawl off, and then I’ll come back and you know, an hour later and it’s eating. But sometimes I feel like I have to do the little put them on the I got some long dance hemustats and I kind of dance them around and kind of get them to strake. Yeah.

00:44:41
Speaker 2: So, m I heard a story the other day a guy that I Knew found a tree with the big cicada hatch two years ago. I found a tree that was just covered in them. Yeah, he said they were like fifteen copper heads around it eat tearing up those cicadas.

00:44:58
Speaker 4: Yep, that’s they get the more the most protein they get for the years from cicadas really really, not from rodents. Yeah, really copperheads. That’s the anytime you have a big cicada hatch, copper heads get relactive because that’s what they do. They have to eat them right when they come out of the shell, when they’re like post molt and they’re softer and that they eat tons of cicadas. But yeah, that’s cool. Where was it at.

00:45:19
Speaker 2: I think it was down in, uh, kind of near a little rock area.

00:45:24
Speaker 4: There was a place up in Yelle County where a guy has a tree in his yard and a bunch of copperheads were coming up every year, like hundreds really and uh yeah, they did some work on it and really haven’t never figured out what was going on, but they thought it was cicadas. This is the original hypothesis.

00:45:42
Speaker 5: But if you had hundreds of copper heads coming up in your yard, Brad, what would you do?

00:45:46
Speaker 4: I would celebrate. I’d be out there every night with a flashlight and flip flops and a beer, like, let’s catch the copper end now. I would find it interesting, and I would tell my kids and my wife don’t go out there at night because there’s coprehads everywhere. But that’s you know, that would be very fascinating.

00:46:03
Speaker 1: Do you have a water moccasin? I do, Yeah, I thought about time you have to bring in.

00:46:06
Speaker 4: Yeah. There. It’s interesting because these are the same the same genus, which is uh their cousins coperheads and common out. They call this an upland moccasin is one of the old terms.

00:46:17
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:46:18
Speaker 1: And where does the term moccasin come from? Because we think of a moccasins, I mean like a shoe shoe. Yeah, I don’t know.

00:46:25
Speaker 4: I would assume the way that you know, they look brownish, leathery, and maybe that I don’t know.

00:46:31
Speaker 2: It’s a good question.

00:46:32
Speaker 4: Maybe they bite you in the feet, well that could be it.

00:46:34
Speaker 1: To the foot, Yeah, they bite you in the moccasin.

00:46:36
Speaker 4: Back to boots. So I have another friend, one of those people, and he was down in Louisiana and he found a huge cotton mouth and uh, he didn’t have his camera, and he didn’t have his stick or something. But he had the old knee high rubber green laossuits or the cross boots or the green lacrosse, which is what I wear. And I feel like I’m you wear something if I’m in a swampy area. Yeah, that’s use what I’m wearing. But he didn’t have anything, and he was forced to put his foot on it to hold onto it till the guy could get back with the camera and the stick and everything, and it bit through the top of that rubber boot into the top of his foot and he got to go to the hospital. Really, they can penetrate rubber boots. After I heard that story, I was a little more leery to wear those and thinking.

00:47:20
Speaker 1: I’m the only time that I have been unintentionally struck by a snake, and honestly, the only time that a venomous snake has made contact with me in a strike was one time I was wearing lacrosse green boots. I was on the Quintin Farm over here in the Ozarks, and I was just walking and I just just felt something just tap my leg and I stepped on a copper.

00:47:48
Speaker 2: I didn’t step on it it was.

00:47:49
Speaker 4: Just like close enough that it struck.

00:47:52
Speaker 1: It was about twelve inches long and it just hit the side of my boot. I mean it didn’t even Yeah, it did nothing. But it was the only time in my life that I got struck completely by and didn’t know it right or wasn’t messing with one like I. You know, I’ve had them to strike at boots and stuff kind of messing with them.

00:48:13
Speaker 3: I think I’m learning this this snake’s method because I last two minutes I was sitting here listening to you guys talking, I forgot there was a venomous snakes hereby.

00:48:24
Speaker 4: You would do well at my house. This is like my living room.

00:48:26
Speaker 2: Does that snake have nostrils behind its eyes or those scales?

00:48:31
Speaker 4: No, through little.

00:48:32
Speaker 1: Dots back behind its eyes on top of that half.

00:48:36
Speaker 4: So that’s an interesting thing that pit vipers have. Timber rattlesnakes have it as well. And there’s several different papers about it, and I’m not an expert on any of them. Some of them think it is a a an eyeball thing to scare a bird or a raptor or something that they would think that’s eyes. And other people say it’s some kind of sensory organ that you know does something with lights.

00:48:56
Speaker 2: No, we don’t know. No, some but it’s not me, not us.

00:49:02
Speaker 4: Yeah, but yes, they all have these two little dots on the very top of their head.

00:49:05
Speaker 1: They’re tight, they’re they’re small. Yeah, but I could see how if they were bigger, you know, I could make sense of it looking like a yeah, a mimicry of eyes.

00:49:13
Speaker 4: Right, but yeah, I think it’s some sort of sensory thing. But I’m not, honestly not sure.

00:49:20
Speaker 1: Do you okay? This is this is a question like a seven year old might ask or a five year old do you think of if a rattlesnake.

00:49:29
Speaker 2: Bit of bear?

00:49:31
Speaker 1: Would the bear get hurt just like a human?

00:49:34
Speaker 4: Yeah? Yeah, if it was a serious bite, yeah it could. Yeah, I don’t know that a bear would die. That’s a big animal, and it can. You know that venom is going to be diffused throughout its system. It’s not like you know, the two hundred and fifty pounds bear, three hundred pund bear. But yeah, definitely so interesting thing. I’m working on a project with doctor Bill Pray. We everybody you know, all these hunters again, I can I’m a hunter too, just not like you guys. But we decided to put some game cameras at a diamondback rattlesnake den and it’s been very fascinating to see the interactions with other animals. And one of the best ones is a big black bear. There’s about a five foot dimond back rattlesnake and he’s up on the shelf on this bluff and this bear comes up there and he’s sniffing around, and then he kind of starts raising up and he gets about eye level with this diamondback and the rattlesnake literally just goes just a little bit and that bear almost does a backflip off of that bluff. I mean he is, Wow, I’m out of here.

00:50:33
Speaker 1: Yeah, he took all his interesting It’s really fascinating.

00:50:44
Speaker 2: I bet bears get bit I would think, think about it. If they’ve got four paws on the ground, ye, they’ve got twice as much, and they’re in snake country.

00:50:53
Speaker 1: Percentage wise, we got two feet, they got four.

00:50:55
Speaker 2: Where you go to find a black bear in the woods is about where you’d go to fight, and a snake too.

00:51:01
Speaker 4: Yeah.

00:51:01
Speaker 2: The first bear I ever shot, when I was tracking them, I got on the north face of this mountain and it is real thick. And I got to the point where I was looking around for blood and I just noticed something on my foot and right at my foot there was a copperhead about an inch from my boot, and it was just it was just good snake country.

00:51:17
Speaker 4: I bet that I would assume that bears can smell them, and yeah, they would have that, wouldn’t they They do. I’m sure amid an oldor knife, they’re irritated, they’ll all musk and let out this really pungent musk.

00:51:30
Speaker 3: Do all snakes do that?

00:51:32
Speaker 2: Yeah?

00:51:32
Speaker 4: Yeah, but some of them are supposed to deter predation. Yeah, it deters.

00:51:38
Speaker 1: Me from picking them up sometimes because I just don’t want to get it on my hands. It’s it’s a nasty smell.

00:51:43
Speaker 4: Yeah. They cotton MOUs are notorious for doing it. You know, there’s a lot of old wives tales that I debunk and my snake talks, but one of them is you might be able to smell a cottonmouth where you can see it. That’s one hundred percent true, because I’ve been in areas where you know there’s cotton mouths and you’re messing around and you haven’t found when yet but also and you smell this really pungent old than you you know, there’s cotton out there. But like I say, I would assume that they, you know, Americ could smell them no when to avoid him. But it was very interesting because this one was up on a rock, so I’m guessing maybe he couldn’t really smell it until he got eye level with it. But the snake rattled very subtly to that bear, just like wow, he was gone.

00:52:21
Speaker 1: He knew to get out of there. But well, that’s very interesting enough snake snake talk, very interesting.

00:52:31
Speaker 4: Listeners are asleep now.

00:52:34
Speaker 1: Well, this is the the final episode that we’re going to talk about the American Civil War for now. Who knows, maybe we’ll they we’ll do it again Rekindle, Maybe we’ll do do a completely different episode and dip more buck inside of the Civil War.

00:52:50
Speaker 2: Probably not.

00:52:52
Speaker 1: But this last episode, what what stood out to you? Did you learn something stood out to you? Joshua can start with you.

00:53:02
Speaker 5: Well, I think, like like I’ve said, I didn’t know a whole lot. I think just that I was really interested in the interactions between Grant and Lee at the surrender.

00:53:13
Speaker 3: I mean, there seemed to be this.

00:53:18
Speaker 5: Almost reverence that Grant had of Lee, but at the same time, it was just like, we’re done. You know what I mean, We’ve dominated, We’re here to end this thing.

00:53:30
Speaker 3: But I respect you, you know what I mean.

00:53:32
Speaker 5: And and I think that that seeing I have this growing appreciation for Grant, because it seemed like at that point he was like, it’s done, you know what I mean, I don’t have to We did the total war, it worked, and now let’s just get the union back together. And I think I really liked hearing that interaction between those two.

00:53:53
Speaker 1: It was it was it was a fascinating interaction. And the typical narrative is that Roberty Lee kind of blew off Grant a little bit, which I think that’s it feels like that may have been what he was trying to do. But it was also probably the worst day, maybe not the worst day of his life. I don’t know what the worst day of his life was, but he was not in the mood for pleasantries. But I do I Grant was living rent free. The Roberty leeds.

00:54:25
Speaker 3: Head did he say, I’ve tried to remember.

00:54:28
Speaker 1: He actually maybe in a way a little bit of a maybe it wasn’t a slight. Maybe it was just him just being as a matter of fact, you know, just like you know what, I’ve tried to remember you, but I couldn’t. Maybe he was just being honest, or maybe he was trying to put him in his place, like, yeah, I don’t remember you.

00:54:47
Speaker 2: It’s a little bit.

00:54:47
Speaker 1: It’s probably it’s probably not okay, or whether I’m accurate or not in like the way we perceive it and kind of like the worst possible version. What do you think, Brad, Yeah, you think probably it.

00:55:01
Speaker 4: Was Yeah, I don’t think it was a slat okay, Yeah, I don’t know the uh this, you know, it’s very interesting because, like I say, the the North just didn’t seem like they thought it was gonna be that hard, and the South was in it all in from.

00:55:16
Speaker 2: The get go.

00:55:17
Speaker 4: And you know, when you get a series of generals in the North that are kind of sissies that like, well, if I just had one more day, or if I just had some more men, I would do this. But and then Grant, you know, comes along and just this is the the whole concept of they’re gonna get it done, regardless of.

00:55:34
Speaker 1: How you’ve known much about Grant. Yeah, but you’re you’re kind of a history buff.

00:55:40
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I was telling Josh the only thing I remember aou Grant from my Civil War class in college was that his wife was cross eyed.

00:55:47
Speaker 2: Yes, so yeah, but that interesting it was.

00:55:49
Speaker 1: That was one of my favorite episode when he when his wife when he became president.

00:55:55
Speaker 2: She said she met with a surgeon attempts to get.

00:55:59
Speaker 1: Her eyes mixed, and he’s like, those are the eyes I fell in love with.

00:56:05
Speaker 4: Yeah, but the you know, just the whole allure around.

00:56:10
Speaker 1: A cross eyed woman, the whole lover with all your heart allure with Robert E.

00:56:15
Speaker 4: Lee, you know, because he was a good general and you know, very tactically sound. And had Jackson not died after Chancellersville, do things go different way? I don’t know.

00:56:27
Speaker 1: You think there is a case to be made if if Stonewall Jackson had lived that it could have been different.

00:56:33
Speaker 4: I think, yes, I don’t know, maybe not different, but would have probably ended up the same place, but it may have took took longer.

00:56:39
Speaker 1: He was that influential. Oh yeah, we really didn’t cover Stonewall Jackson, so.

00:56:44
Speaker 4: You could do a whole thing on him. He’s a very interesting cat. Yeah, but he was definitely Lee’s right hand and after Gettysburg, I felt like the South had been gut punched and was just kind of stumbling, wait and get knocked out at that point.

00:56:58
Speaker 2: You know, Bart, what do you think? I also thought that the surrender interaction was pretty interesting. One part that I found really interesting was Grant’s thoughts on the war being over and Roberty Lee being a valiant enemy. I can’t remember how he worded it, but like how Grant almost felt depressed from he felt melancholy.

00:57:29
Speaker 1: That was the word of the age today, it’s like mental health and depression. They use the word melancholy back in those days.

00:57:35
Speaker 2: Yeah, I thought that was really interesting and it I mean, I just kind of tried to put myself in either of their shoes and just think about that, Like if your whole mission for years was to end this war or to win the war, And it’s kind of like in a way, it was like Grant versus Roberty Lee with their armies, and Robberty Lee was Grant’s enemy. Then for that to be finalized like that, that was probably his whole purpose in life for a long time. For that to be finalized would have been quite the I mean, I can kind of see how Grant would have gotten to that place a little bit. But yeah, I thought it was interesting his respect for his enemy, but also it said that he didn’t he couldn’t imagine a worst cause to be fighting for. Yeah, so yeah, it’s it’s kind of interesting to look at wars like that from a long time ago, because there was a lot more I don’t I guess the word could be like chivalry or just chivalry. Yeah, it’s just it’s just interesting because that’s not at all how it would be today.

00:58:48
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, they say that the Civil War is one of the first kind of modern wars.

00:58:55
Speaker 2: But these guys would.

00:58:56
Speaker 1: Have been trained and kind of grown up with this heritage of this chivalry inside of you know, like this this meeting, this surrender, even though it was an unconditional surrender, it’s still probably had remnants of kind of an older era that really wouldn’t happen like that again to my knowledge, at least in American history, where there would be a surrender.

00:59:19
Speaker 2: Quite like this. But I thought it was I thought it was.

00:59:23
Speaker 1: Interesting and how Grant was like, don’t celebrate, like telling his guys not to celebrate, which was so consistent with who he was so misty. And I have been listening to on on tape on tape it’s not it’s not tape on eight on the eight track. We’ve been listening to Grant, the book by Ron Cher Now Ture.

00:59:48
Speaker 3: Now that’s a book.

00:59:50
Speaker 1: The book is a thousand pages long and it is forty eight hours of audio. Wow, and it is it is fascinating. I listened to it while I was bulldozing a couple of weeks ago, and it goes into like enormous detail that we weren’t able to get into. But you get this picture of Grant who he was. And Grant when he was twenty, I think would have done the same thing as the Grant that was forty when he beat his enemy. He was he was like, we’re not going to celebrate. He had empathy for defeat, you know that kind of you know, you can be so clinical and introspective on somebody and you know, like try to attribute things and maybe there’s connection there or not. But what they say, what Chure now says, is that Grant had experienced so much defeat in his life, you know, and all of Grant’s thirties were just this like failure after failure after failure, basically left the army because of his alcohol abuse. Didn’t really get kicked out, but kind of got kicked out hard to say, business failures, all this stuff. And so in the moment when he actually won and this guy on the other side of the table was the one that failed, he kind of had he showed some empathy. Because there’s a hundred different versions of that story. I mean, it’s the one that we have, but there’s a hundred different versions of that story where you know, the victor goes, you’re going to prison or you know what, we’re gonna go put you in the gallows this afternoon, and he probably would have been justified in doing that. But Lincoln’s leadership and then grants just the history of who he was, you know, that didn’t happen. And I felt like that that was I’m not an expert on.

01:01:50
Speaker 2: Other wars of the world.

01:01:52
Speaker 1: Perhaps, and certainly there are examples of this kind of thing happening in other places where you know, a general in some way shows mercy towards this vehement foe. But it feels like that that is at least the ideal that we would have as Americans. Like this moment kind of shows that a little bit.

01:02:17
Speaker 4: I’m reminded there’s a scene in the series Band of Brothers at the end of the war. There’s a general that’s submitting his sight arm to Winners, the main character, and he tells him to keep it. And I think it’s kind of the same thing. Who’s like, you know, surrendered with dignity. He wasn’t going to rub his nose in it, and he let him keep his pistol. Yeah, it’s kind of the same thing. M classy, classy, And Grant’s is such a just an amazing story because, like I say, comes from nothing and as the president much less, you know, winning the Civil War. It makes you wonder if Grant was there instead of McLellan or Mead or any of these other guys earlier the things. Yeah, if he had gotten noticed earlier and was in the East with things have been different. I don’t know. Yeah, but he definitely had a different outlook on, you know, how to maintain the war and prosecute it, and you know, totally different from the other guys.

01:03:18
Speaker 1: You know, he was only the lead of the army for two years, yeah, about two years, so yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, so we painted this picture and told a version of the story that probably tilted the scales towards really positive.

01:03:36
Speaker 2: Things about Grant.

01:03:38
Speaker 1: And I did that because, I mean, that’s just the story that I that I heard and I felt like was accurate. But also I think it probably had to do with how little I knew about Grant, and as I learned about him, I was just like, Wow, look at this guy. This is pretty incredible. But there’s a version of the story that all these wonderful things that we talk about Grant aren’t really that relevant. And basically they just had twice as many soldiers and twice as much supplies and that’s why they won.

01:04:12
Speaker 2: What say you, I mean, I’m sure that’s part of it.

01:04:18
Speaker 3: That helps. I didn’t hurt.

01:04:20
Speaker 2: That helps. I didn’t. I didn’t actually realize that the union had that much of an advantage until this podcast series. But I mean, yeah, it definitely feels like that would be a big part of it. But huge good good leadership does have to be does seem like you would also need good leadership. Well, the fact that.

01:04:41
Speaker 1: It was kind of a stalemate until for a couple of years. Anyway, even in the midst of this this this difference in supplies and men tells you that leadership maybe did have something to do with it. Yeah, because if you know, they were just they just continued to not be able to defeat the South, not be able to defeat the South, and then but eventually they just kind of wore them down. What did you think about, Brad The last section of the podcast where I read from McPherson’s book, where he basically says, everybody says that the South was just outnumbered and they got beat and that was kind of part of the part of the narrative of why they got beat. But then he’s like, but history tells us that they could have won.

01:05:33
Speaker 4: What say you you know, the thinking about Shelby Foote, you know, talking about they talked to some Civil War soldier in Virginia or something. He says, why are you fighting? Is like because they’re down here, you know, So the South kind of had a different I mean, I know slavery is the key issue, but the South was fighting for different reasons, you know than the North. I don’t know that’s a that’s a deep thought, but.

01:06:13
Speaker 1: Well, what did you not to if you want to complete your thought? Complete it? But I’ve got another question for you, and what’s that? What did you think about my Rambo reference?

01:06:23
Speaker 4: I caught that.

01:06:24
Speaker 2: I enjoyed it. Yes, you like me? Are Rambo ficionado?

01:06:29
Speaker 4: Absolutely? Yes, But yeah, the I don’t know, there’s a you know, it’s interest. There’s so many layers the Civil War and like a lot of people in South were descended from Scottish and Wales and the you know warring tribes of back then. Those are the people settled in the South, and you know, they had a whole different They’re a lot more aggressive and I think that, you know, versus the North, which is kind of like, I don’t know, the military wasn’t as it was more of a profession than you know, I don’t know where I’m going with this, but but you know, it was almost like a religious thing in the South to fight against this, and then in the North maybe not so much.

01:07:13
Speaker 2: Yeah.

01:07:15
Speaker 1: Yeah, I’ve heard that before, and sometimes I wonder if if that’s true or not.

01:07:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know what I mean.

01:07:22
Speaker 4: I know, as you get older, you start seeing how history is, it’s always written by the winners.

01:07:28
Speaker 2: What about what about the lost cause?

01:07:30
Speaker 1: Would that have been a phrase that you would have known grown up down in the South of your whole life.

01:07:34
Speaker 4: I’d never heard it till I took that class in college, so you do. Yeah, but yeah, I was aware of that, but and then like I never realized that’s you know, we still heard echoes of that in the eighties and nineties.

01:07:45
Speaker 2: Just a good old boy, that’s right.

01:07:47
Speaker 4: I mean, how could that be bad? I mean, but uh, that is interesting how that’s morphed over time. But it really comes from a kind of a dark place.

01:07:56
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, so.

01:07:59
Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, what else anything else stand out to you?

01:08:04
Speaker 2: Josh?

01:08:05
Speaker 1: The whole series. Now we’re we’re we’re we’re done, the whole series.

01:08:09
Speaker 3: Yeah.

01:08:10
Speaker 5: I feel like I’m saying goodbye to a relative, like a you know, a new relative.

01:08:15
Speaker 1: You’re finally gonna have to put the Civil War behind you, Josh years.

01:08:20
Speaker 5: I know, Okay, literally, like you meet this this this family member, and you really like them, and now they got to leave.

01:08:26
Speaker 3: So I think I think.

01:08:29
Speaker 2: You want to crank out another one?

01:08:32
Speaker 3: Yeah, one more, just one more for good old times.

01:08:34
Speaker 1: We’ll do we’ll do a encore. What do you call it when the band comes back out?

01:08:39
Speaker 3: Yeah?

01:08:41
Speaker 5: I think I think for me, I just have appreciated it, just learning the history of the nation I was born in, you know what I mean, And and being able to to uh value the lessons learned and and see how it’s kind of shaped our country for good and for bad. But to be able to discern that from these historical events I saw.

01:09:04
Speaker 3: I really appreciate that.

01:09:06
Speaker 5: I’ve I’ve gained new appreciation for different players inside of the war, you know, Grant being a big one. I think even hearing new things about Lincoln that I didn’t know about kind of put him in a different light to me.

01:09:18
Speaker 3: And so yeah, I think it’s been really great.

01:09:20
Speaker 2: Mm hmmm, mm hmm. What thoughts on.

01:09:26
Speaker 1: Me saying that we’ve kind of left out the story of the.

01:09:33
Speaker 2: Of the of the slaves.

01:09:35
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would have did it.

01:09:37
Speaker 1: I didn’t want it to come across as like a virtue signal of like, but but but I felt it was actually true. We tried to find, well, there there is literature out there. There’s there’s maybe not a lot as compared to the volumes that are just about the actual war, right, but I did think it was important to say that.

01:10:03
Speaker 3: Because that’ll be Civil War Summer Part two.

01:10:06
Speaker 1: Well, it’s it’s we are going to talk about reconstruction at some point, which I may have mentioned something in the vein of that, but I think the reconstruction era and leading up to today, I mean, like this war had massive consequences that just rippled through through America and I think maybe.

01:10:31
Speaker 2: Even continues to do so. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:10:35
Speaker 1: The economics of the modern South are still impacted by reconstruction.

01:10:41
Speaker 3: Wow.

01:10:42
Speaker 1: And and if you want to look at economics, education, all the things that you hope that your state would be at the top of a list of fifty, most of the Southern states are at the bottom of all the important stuff. And there can be a barely coherent line drawn back to reconstruction.

01:11:06
Speaker 3: Well, don’t give away everything.

01:11:08
Speaker 1: You know what, We’re not even gonna do the episode anymore. You already know what’s going to happen. Uh No, And that’s that This is these are questions that I have. This that’s a I have a general understanding of it. But but but at some point in the future, we’re going to come back to this.

01:11:27
Speaker 2: Sound good, be it’s.

01:11:28
Speaker 1: Okay with that, Yeah, okay, it’s fascinating story.

01:11:32
Speaker 4: It really is like, say, you get a more of appreciation for not to get emotional, but when the flag flies and you’re saying the pledge of allegiance that means something, you know it doesn’t this, don’t take that lightly.

01:11:47
Speaker 2: Mm hmm. Yeah, a lot of history.

01:11:54
Speaker 1: Well, closing comments, don’t try, Brad, what’s the most interesting you? You were burn us with all kinds of interesting facts. You’re on your way today to where.

01:12:05
Speaker 4: To the Levon Helm exhibit?

01:12:07
Speaker 1: And you were very disappointed that I didn’t know who that was.

01:12:10
Speaker 4: Listeners, Clay Nukeomb did not know who Levon Helm was. So I’ve tried to educate him about Levon Helm and the band and romping Ronnie Hawkins and all the musical history that Fateville has, and uh so hopefully he’ll start listening to some music and doing some documentary watching and learning about the band and Leavon Hilm of Arkansas and his legacy.

01:12:37
Speaker 1: So you’re going to see some of his uh yeah.

01:12:40
Speaker 4: Some of his memorabilion stuff. So there’s any traveling exhibit apparently up in Fateville, Arkansas right now and kind of exciting.

01:12:49
Speaker 2: Take these snakes in with you.

01:12:50
Speaker 4: I’ve actually got a place to take him. I was going to ask you if I just leave him here. Oh, but then i’d have to come all the way back down here. And you know, so I got a spot in Fateville.

01:12:59
Speaker 5: I can leave it like a doggy daycare for snakes boarding.

01:13:04
Speaker 4: If that had blown up and this had blown up, then I was going to throw me in a pillow case and throw me a backpack and then walk around with a backpack full of rattlesnakes. But that was my last resort, So.

01:13:14
Speaker 2: Wow, I don’t have to do that.

01:13:17
Speaker 3: Flag.

01:13:17
Speaker 1: What’s the wildest carry a snake in an odd place story you have?

01:13:23
Speaker 4: Up at When I went to school at the University of Arkansas, I can remember multiple times of having a snake in a backpack that I found on the road on the way to school. And one time a guy called me is like, hey can catch this, And I didn’t have time, so I just put my backpack and like I would sit on the floor and then I would notice the snake would be moving. And one time a girl’s like, why is your backpack movie?

01:13:41
Speaker 2: It’s like, I’m not sure.

01:13:43
Speaker 4: And we just left it at that. Yeah, I have carried snakes into some odd places. Funny story. Where I work, it’s a big company and they have a room where all the servers. Are it stays warming, They’re like seventy five degrees. Well, I had a snake program in mid December, and I lived about thirty five miles from work, so I didn’t want to have to come back get my snakes go back over there. I thought, I was take them with me and I’ll just stick them down there in that server room because nobody goes down there there. So I took all my venless snakes and put them in there, and then I got a panicked call about eight thirty from a guy saying, Hey, I need you to come down here right now. And I’m like, well, let me finish it. He’s O, no, I’m serious, right now. You need to come right now. And one of the vps, vice president of the company had for some reason went down there and saw these buckets and was like, what is this and opened the lid and found the rattlesnake. He was not a snake guy, And so I had to put them in my car and let the car idle for four hours.

01:14:43
Speaker 2: Did you get in trouble?

01:14:44
Speaker 4: No, I mean other than don’t you ever do this again or we’ll fire you.

01:14:48
Speaker 2: Do you actually have to talk to the VP?

01:14:50
Speaker 1: Oh? Yeah, he wasn’t happy.

01:14:52
Speaker 4: He was not impressed. No, and so yeah, so that’s yes, snakes have put me in some odd situations. But it was like they’re in buckets. I should have put a do not and in fact I think I did. I had a note this said do not touch.

01:15:06
Speaker 2: Obviously he opened the bucket.

01:15:08
Speaker 4: Well it’s not yours, don’t test, you know, don’t.

01:15:10
Speaker 3: Touch it, especially if it’s rattling.

01:15:12
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so.

01:15:16
Speaker 1: Legendary newcomb lore story. When I was a kid, I remember it so vividly because I was just a kid, so I was impressionable. But my dad Garble LIVERNUKMB and John Mesco, doctor John Mesco were out riding fo whelers. They came across a big timber rattler and now my dad is an advocate of snakes and didn’t didn’t like to kill them, but this group and they decided they were going to well, they were gonna mount this snake. John Mesco was gonna mount the snake. It was a nice one and so he took a little switch and just popped it on the back of the neck. There was a period of time when that was a way to kill snake and maybe it still is, but I remember at the time it was like, oh yeah, this is the way to do it with I don’t mess it up without hurting it. So he pops this snake on the back of the neck, supposedly breaking the spine, and the snake’s dead. This was also the period of fanny packs in the late eighties and early nineties, and so John had.

01:16:14
Speaker 2: A real tree, real tree bark.

01:16:19
Speaker 1: Big fanny pack like for hunting, and he puts this big snake in the fanny pack. And Dad says they went riding for several hours and the snake came alive, came back to life.

01:16:32
Speaker 2: Maybe never was.

01:16:33
Speaker 1: Dead, you know obviously, and it’s it’s you know, wiggling around on him. And they go to the text termist Larry Hobbs, man named Larry Hobbs, and Dad said, John walks into Larry Hobbs little bitty he just had a little portable building, you know, like ten by twelve that was his. And he said, John walked in and unzipped that fanny pack and just flip that snake out in the midst of all three of them sitting in there, and that snake just you know, and there was a big story so yeah, John Mesco, did you hey, did you see my snake up there?

01:17:10
Speaker 4: No? Sorry, man, that’s a big one. Yeah, that’s nice.

01:17:13
Speaker 1: Yeah, I didn’t have anything to do with that.

01:17:15
Speaker 4: I was about to say, where did that come from?

01:17:17
Speaker 1: It came from Arkansas, Howard County.

01:17:19
Speaker 4: Oh. I was about to say that looks like South Arkansas to me. M hm, just because the amount of chevrons and the.

01:17:24
Speaker 1: Yeah, I do have a big, big snake skin in this office.

01:17:28
Speaker 2: Big. It was a good one. Yeah.

01:17:32
Speaker 1: Well, thanks thanks for coming, Brad. Thank you really appreciate it.

01:17:35
Speaker 4: I enjoyed it. Bear.

01:17:37
Speaker 1: Hey, what about the channel? What’s coming up on the channel?

01:17:39
Speaker 4: Mm?

01:17:40
Speaker 2: Well, this week the video was uh making a fishing lure using only a leatherman. So I went and cut down a little piece of river birch, made a fishing lure, caught some fish on it. Next week we’re doing We’re bringing back another cooking with Mom. Oh crowd favorite, Yeah, crowd favorite. Mm hmm. So be ready. You don’t have any them egg rolls, do you? Wills? That looked good? They were.

01:18:10
Speaker 4: Yeah. I’ve really enjoyed your videos. I watched them religiously now.

01:18:14
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, oh yeah, I appreciate it nice good stuff, good nice, nice nice.

01:18:20
Speaker 1: Well, thanks for watching, everybody. We’re out of the bar Greece Civil War summer. So the next Bear Grease is just complete mystery what it’s going to be about.

01:18:29
Speaker 2: The war is over, the war.

01:18:31
Speaker 3: Over unconditional surrender, all right.

01:18:35
Speaker 1: Keep the wild places wild, because that’s where the Rattlesnake’s comprehends lives