The War of the Eggs

it up. I thought the enthusiasm was there. That's all it really counts. Thank you, Billy, thank you for thank you for successfully helping to hype me back up. Now my ego has exploded again. I'll lock it up. They're real big, it's fun. I just want to I just want to publicly say that Robert told me if if he ever asks me for green juice, I'm supposed to kill him. Yes, that was our rule because of a celebrity that she'll not be named ego. Oh, you get

under the green juice level. I think that's asking you can get your own green juice. I'm not going to be drinking green juice. If I care about living that long ever, then I've lived too long already. Yeah. Oh yeah, you don't have kids. See, we have to think different. You got it. You got mad at you. That's good, Billy. It's been a little while. How have you been. I'm good. Yeah. We've all been fighting the powers their own ways. M M.

I saw some of your fighting the power. You can talk about the movie you were in now, I assume if it's a secret, it's a bad one. Still, I think yeah, I think, yeah. It is fun when people ask me like was that you and I don't know. I do not know. Well, Billy, I wasn't bored at too you guys were you were And it's a great movie. You were great in it. Uh. And you got to hang out with some of my favorite Chudu Pacific Northwest. Yeah, some of the people with guns who like to stand

on street corners and yell at teenagers. That was lovely. I mean, it wasn't like I've told my wife and other people. It was like, they're like, were you scared? I was like, it was people I grew up or with. I know how to talk to them. Yeah, they're not they're not super complicated, but you know it is complicated, Billy. That was a great transition, Thank you. No, I was gonna guess so much stuff in my brain just eggs, eggs. You're complicated A lot going on with an egg oh man. Yeah.

I forgot what podcast I was on and where we were going, and I was like, oh, eggs, and then I was like, no, this is not gonna go. And I like eggs, and now I don't like them. You like eggs, so you like eggs. You're on board? Is like, eg eggs, that's correct. Yeah, they're far as a diet, they're pretty great. How do you feel about war h m hm less I feel I mean, at this at this point in history, I think it's a silly consent. How do you feel about the city of San Francisco.

I'm okay, all these things together, I'm on board with Okay. Yeah, that's what we're talking about, the egg war that that rocked San Francisco for like thirty years back in the eight hundreds. Hail. Yeah, yeah, we're talking about silly war that I would be involved in. It is some silly bullshit, Billy.

It is some very very funny, silly bullshit, and it starts as most stories of silly bullshit do in the city of San Francisco, or at least like the collection of tents and whorehouses that became San Francisco eventually, But it was really just a campsite with a lot of prostitutes back there. Yeah. Yeah, it's always been pretty great. It's always it's always been great. Yeah. And the poop on the streets thing not new, no, no, no, no.

The abundance I think is the new part. Yeah. Although when I was there, I was like, it's not that their ship on the street that is not new. There's a lot of it, you guys. And they're like, that is the problem. That is the problem. And I also think the average fiber content per person shipping on the street may have increased. That's the theory I have. I think, Well, I think, if we're being honest, what happens is when you're on heroin, you get constipated and then you release

all of it at once, is what we're dealing with. Yeah, um so Billy. In eighteen forty eight, the city of San Francisco's population was a mere eight hundred people, and again, it was basically just a big, muddy camp site. Um, there were more redwoods than people at this stage. And there used to be a shipload of redwoods all over San Francisco before we murdered all those priceless works of natural art so that we could have, you know, like

the wee work buildings. Can you imagine if there were redwoods just all over the city now instead of the things that are there. Some of the things that are there, we're just like, no, like some of them. Yeah, we can keep like the five hundred Club, like the good bars and ship Yes, that's yeah, all of North Beaches, yes, yeah, just a bunch of bars and redwoods and nothing else. Yeah, yeah,

a couple of grocery stores. So yeah. On January, a carpenter building a mill near Coloma, California, found flakes of gold in the water. The news got out, and in very short order, tens of thousands of Americans flitted into California's first gold rush. And California has kind of always been just a series of gold rushes ever since. That's why there's forty million people here, because people are dumb

and they like they like easy money. Um. Also, the weather Vegas an't getting smaller, No, no, it's not, thank God. Actually the selection, Thank god for last f one time. I will say that that is that that you're looking at the mat. Huh, I'll be damned. Well they did it all right. I guess we'll keep gambling illegal everywhere else. You guys earned another four years. Well my thought was like with that was like real quick or oh he's piste off everyone. Yeah, he's he's got Vegas angry. Yes,

and they're so easy to distract. Yes, Uh yeah, it is funny that he picked a fight with Philadelphia too. Yeah, that's just you. Yeah, you can't. They'll they'll come to they'll cross anile to get in a fight. Uh, speaking of fights, you know because the Oakland Raiders this is

close enough anyway. Uh yeah. So all these people start flooding into California because they want to shipload of gold, and the city of San Francisco, or the collection of tents that became San Francisco, grew rapidly from a population of about eight hundred and eighteen forty eight to twenty thousand people by eighteen fifty. Um. Yeah, that's a lot. I just think of. Have you and we've been to those cities like where the population explodes in the infrastructure

can't really handle it. Just traffic everywhere. Yes, that's just traffic. This is like before sewers. Yeah, like you see right now in a couple of cities in the world or even in the United States. Um, you know, they grew too fast. There was a sudden influx of people in the infrastructure can't keep up. And it's a problem, going from eight hundred to twenty thousand people in two years as a calamity. It's like a hurricane hit Like it's a natural disaster, you know. Um, And it doesn't it

doesn't go well. It creates a series of problems, most of which will actually sound eerily familiar to anyone who lives in San Francisco today or who's just like driven through it. Uh. And I want to quote here from a paragraph in the Anals of San Francisco about the

city culture during the gold Rush era. Despite the and again this is like written in fucking the eighteen fifties, despite the amazingly high cost of living and the extraordinary opportunities for frittering away money, everyone in daily San Francisco was supremely confident that he would be able to return home with an incalculable amount of gold. Everything was conceived on a vast scale, and there was always plenty of cash available for any scheme that might be proposed, no

matter how impossible or bizarre it seemed. Oh, how the times have changed. Yeah, it's a completely different city today. Wow, you wouldn't write that exact same paragraph about San Francisco hundred and sixty years later. It's just that that that voice has changed now. It's like now it's like in a land of ones and zeros. Yeah, no, bro, you'd plenty of cash for any plan you could propose. Yeah. No, they're like big cars, but they carry a lot of people,

you know those busses. No, no, no, because we don't pay the driver a salary. Instead he could super mile fee based on an app and we don't have to give him healthcare. Brilliant, Yeah, brilliant. Why do you see what I'm gonna do to Rhodes. That's we're laughing, But that's a conversation. Yeah, that is a conversation. I'm excited for Rotor without an E, the app to come out and privatize the filling of potholes so that there are somehow more of them. Um do that it doesn't work.

So most depictions of San Francisco in the eighteen fifties portrayed as again essentially just a pile of brothels, casinos, and crude tent neighborhoods filled with filthy male miners. One of the first problems that this explosion population had is that there were almost no women in the entire city. That's, oh, that's not good for the prostitution. Well, it's good for the prostitutes that are there. Well that, yeah, it's good for Brenda. Brenda is having a good time. It's a

seller's market for Brenda. Hey, that's so. One miner during this period is purported to have acquired a single woman slipper and made a good living, charging his fellows a dollar to touch it. I know that that you understand how that works to do you know what? I just thought of times in my life from it, I could say I could see making a living doing that, and

so yeah. A less ethical business person in the same field was a Liza Farnham, who operated a boat called the Bride Ship that ferried women from the East coast to the west, presumably so they could marry. Would schever miners had the best luck and uncovering gold. Yeah, time period, if we're being honest, that is not the worst way people were getting married. No, because there's a decent chance you'll die on the boat. That's way better than being

married back the yea. So, food was, however, by a wide margin, the most expensive thing in the city because again, basically, no one lived in California at this point. I say basically no, like white people lived in California, and the Indigenous people were not exactly psyched to help out a bunch of gold miners, um. And also you know genocide and such. Um. So, yeah, there was not a great

deal of farming infrastructure. There was not a great deal of food for this sudden this what had essentially been a small town that had turned into what at that point was like a mid size city almost overnight. Um, they're just like, wasn't fucking food And for an example of how like incredibly expensive ship was in San Francisco at this point, it was actually worse than it is today by comparison. So restaurants in imag because it's incredibly

expensive to eat. That's my opening joke. The taco My opening joke is literally to the crowd like, oh do you all are you all roommates? Is that how you the whole crowd roommate? And they everyone laughs every time because it's funny. Yeah, because they're actually two different households exactly. Yeah. So at this period of time in the early eighteen fifties, restaurants in town charged a dollar for a slice of bread two dollars if it was buttered, which is the

equivalent of fifty six dollars in modern money. Wow, it's neck and neck, it is. That's because San France, where that the toast craze came from. Oh, you can get some good toast in San Francisco. Look, they've gotten good at making toast over the years. I guess it's always been a staple. Uh. In eighteen fifty a nice breakfast for two, which consisted of cheese, butter, sardines, bread, and two beers would cost the equivalent of modern dollars. So

it's the same, it's the same. Yeah. As it's probably clear by now, the real money to be made in San Francisco ring the gold Rush was not in mining gold, but was in selling miners the things that they needed it radically inflated prices, which is kind of the same. There's a fun story from Redding, California, which is the center of the marijuana industry that nobody ever talks about because nobody wants to think about reading all that much. Just on the highway, so it's easy. It's where they

a lot of the sales. Yeah, and it's it's a good growing area all around it because it's dry but also hot, like people talk about Humboldt, but it's a bit wet there. Um. One of the big things that is like a major product in the pot industry of turkey bags, which is what you put the pot into when you process it. And they're the bags that you would brian a turkey in. And the company that made these bags noticed that year round they were selling a

shipload of turkey bags in Redding, California. So they said, like a representative out to figure out, like people just eating turkey all year round in this town. And then he found out and he had to like quietly go back home, like we can't really advertise on this. I just this is just interviewed a lady in southern Humboldt.

And during the camp days, a bunch of revenuers is like, as I as I was pointed out they said the rs I was like, well, moonshine, they call the revenuers and there again and they went this guy was selling uh black pipe and he sold way anyone ever had ever ever sold ever. And they're like, let me see your books that. The old man was like, nah, no, you don't need to know why I'm selling this much of this stuff because if because you guys will make them stop doing this. And I like money, man, I

ain't doing anything illegal. I just like that. The old man was like, no, no, I ain't turning that money fountain officer, nothing I need to be doing that. So the same thing is happening in San Francisco. During this period. People are figuring out the people who are really making money aren't mining gold. They're mining miners, you know, um and yeah. The most intelligent of them realize that, you know, the easiest thing to sell miners and the most profitable

thing would be food, um, and sex. But there was more competition in the sex business. Now. The most desired food stuff in all of the Bay Area was eggs. Not only are eggs filled with protein, they're necessary ingredient in all manner of pastries and cakes. You know, you can't make fucking bagels or whatever without or whatever. I don't know, you cant of together without eggs. Yeah, they're critical and a last for the growing polity gold rush.

Arai San Francisco was completely the funk out of eggs. The problems started when the first ten thousand men are so flooded into the city and devoured every single chicken and rooster that they could get their hands on, like a whole word of protein hungry locusts. They just ate everything, like there's enough chicken to feed eight hundred people. People move in and eat it all overnight, and suddenly there's

no more birds to lay eggs. Uh. Now, it's not quite certain why, but no additional birds arrived for years to restock the Bay area's farms. And this is a bit of a historical mystery because both southern California and Baja had farms and had chickens, and even in eighteen forty nine, it wouldn't have been hard to send a few boatloads of birds up the coast um and there are different theories about why none of them actually were, Like there were no just no populations of breeding chickens

in the Bay area. One of the theories comes from an artist named Eva Croissant, who was one of the world's top experts on the very weird subject of today's episodes, and she cites some convincing evidence that a mix of two factors contributed to the lack of poultry. Number One, chicken feed wasn't terribly short supply, and thus chickens were

primarily fed garbage, which didn't help their health. And some sort of horrible bird plague kept killing off imported birds, because we do have cases of people bringing in birds and then the lull die basically overnight. So for whatever the cause was, it was impossible to establish a population of chickens in the city of San Francisco for years. As a result of this, in a city famed for gold, one of the most valuable items was the humble HNN egg.

It was not uncommon for eggs to be imported from as far away from Chile, like they're they're bringing Chilean eggs into San Francisco because there's no laying eggs. And you see that, I think, yeah, and I I could see those assholes still doing stuff like that today. Yeah, that's a Chilean egg. Motherfucker. That's you're gonna have to pay a lot of money for these Chilean chickens. You know where Chili is. No, Yeah, it's real, real fancy.

The eggs very they feed the chicken setting. So the price of eggs at its peak was near the equivalent of thirty dollars in a modern dollars an egg in San Francisco. Um, yeah, I know some people who would be very rich based on their backyards if that was still the case. One journalist at the time noted that the city of San Francisco was desperate for eggs and that a fortune would be made by any man or woman daring enough to figure out how to provide them.

And it just so happened, Billy, that twenty six miles off the coast of the Bay lay the fire Aland Islands, known as the Islands of the Dead to the coast Miwalk tribe. The fire Lands are some of the least pleasant land on planet Earth. Two hundred and eleven acres of rocky cliffs and outcroppings of solid granite. They're basically giant, sharp boulders in the middle of the sea. That I was going to say, it's like it just sounds like

big rocks. Yeah, they're huge, deadly rocks. One representative of the National Marine Sanctuary described them as looking like a piece of the moon that fell into the sea. Now, the far Lands have never hosted human populations naturally, like like the indigenous people didn't live there. They call them the Islands of the dead. Like, don't fucking go there,

you'll get killed. It's a bad place to be, partly because the seas around them are incredibly rough, and until people had kind of like more modern boats, even when people had modern boats, boats crashed into them all of the goddamn time. I was gonna say, it's still just it's needless, you guys, you don't need to do this. Yeah, And there was really nothing there. The island's only natural inhabitants were hordes of sea lions and hundreds of thousands

of birds. The most common species was called the common mirror. It's a small ocean bird with exactly one note where the attribute. Its eggs are the size of soft balls, so it's smaller than a chicken, but it's eggs are like twice the size of a chicken's eggs. Now Mere eggs are actually if you look them up online. They're really cool looking eggs. I kind of want to get some and try them. They're rounded at the bottom and narrow on the top, kind of like one of those

Russian nesting dolls. Um And it's theorized that this is because they lay them on the sides of cliffs and stops them from like rolling over. I really need. They're very vividly colored. Some of them are like turquoise, and they're covered in like black markings that look almost like alien handwriting. They're like like a nice like a nice mug from like from like, yeah, they look like somebody in Taus made them, and like, yeah, that's what you described.

I just thought of Aunt I had. I'm like, she would love this. Side note question, Billy, when I said, do you want to come back on behind the Pastors? Did you think we would be talking about hex? I don't. I never know. I didn't. I didn't think that the president of the United States that would discuss stuff that we had discussed the bleach that was like, I was like, I don't like that. I'm ahead of this. I don't

like that. Yeah, I'm not. I'm not wild about the fact that the thing that we laughed at because it was absurd was then urged for people to do by the president during a pandemic. Yeah, when everyone was joking about it. When it happened, I was like, this isn't good. This is a problem. People are gonna die. Yeah. I was like, people are already doing this, and if the president mentions it, it's not good. People are like, inn't this funny. I'm like, I wish it was a dude.

That's the thing. That's what's beautiful about the thing that happened with the Four Seasons because most of the things that people have thought was funny that have happened this year aren't really funny if you understand what's going on. They're terrifying. That one was actually that's just perfect. Yeah

I did. I laughed that laugh where I didn't make noise when I first read about it because I was like I did that thing where I was like, who's behind like, because I was like some comedian did this is very funny? Yeah? I did do that. Did you also do like the dry heat? Because it was like it was like my little toddler crying where I was like the harder I thought about it, the more I was like that is, it's every now and then Karma's

just like here you go. What was even What was even better about that one was being able to share it with people who hadn't seen the story yet and then got to appreciate their initial laugh about it's still funny. Sorry, that eggs my bad. Perfect, No, Sophie, not back to eggs, because we're professionals and that means it's time to go to ads. Oh see, Sophie, sometimes I bring us to ads and you don't warn me because I remember and you don't. So there you go. I'm a hack on

a fraud, Robert. I'll fire myself now you're making me feel bad. It was a harsh treatment. You really you really spun that back at me. Now the guns pointed in the other direction, just like Raytheon brand shoot yourself in the face rifles. Wanted a rifle that you're going to happen? Ye, I don't know. That's not my best Raytheon joke. Nope, but I'll take it. I'm sorry, ads, we're back. Uh well, Billy eggs, eggs eggs. So I do suggest looking up mirror eggs because they're they're kind

of fucking awesome. Actually, they really neat eggs. Uh there and yeah, they're they're edible, um, although they have a red yolk and a bluish tint um that most people describe as unsettling to eat. Uh. And they yeah, because it's like a weird color. And it's not it's not terrible, but it's not super appetizing. Um. But there were a funckload of them. A few sailors over the years had stopped off at the fire lands and found that during big chunks of the summer it was covered in just

piles of tens of thousands of eggs um. And while they wouldn't taste great fried, they worked perfectly if you mixed them in the dough. You could bake with them and you wouldn't notice that you were using a hen egg. And they're twice as big as a hen egg. So they really go a long way towards alleviating the the egg shortage. And I'm gonna quote from the Smithsonian here. Stale mirror eggs had a strong fishy aftertaste in the words of one commenter, and overripe mirror egg is something

never to be for gotten. It requires about three months to get the taste out of the mouth. As a result, the eggers inaugurated each harvest season by smashing all of the mere eggs on the island, thereby ensuring the collection of freshly laid eggs. So when people started harvesting these eggs which we were about to get into, you would have to break all of the eggs that were there when you arrived, because it would force the mirrors to lay new eggs. And then you would take those eggs

and bring them back home. And if you're thinking was this bad for the mirror population, yes, yeah, no I was as soon as you said commerce, these birds are fucked. They don't do great. So bit by bit people started to talk about how all the eggs on this island might be able to satisfy the Bay area's deep hunger for pastries. The first man to try and make a fortune off of Farrell and Eggs was an adventurer from Maine named Doc Robinson. He'd heard whispers of mere eggs

in the saloons and gambling dens on the waterfronts. In the spring of eighteen forty nine, Doc and his brother Oran chartered a boat and headed to the islands. They found them absolutely covered in birds, hundreds of thousands of mirrors. The men loaded their boats so full of eggs that they could barely fit inside it. And I'm gonna quote now from the book The Devil's Teeth by Susan Casey.

Robinson and Dorman loaded their boat with eggs and headed back to San Francisco, coming up against a nasty storm and dumping half their cargo into the ocean just to stay upright. Nonetheless, they sold the remaining eggs for a dollar a dozen and pocketed three thousand dollars, serious money in those days. Robinson opened his own burlesque call, another big growth segment of the fledged in California economy, and neither man ever went back to the fire loans, but

others did. Within a week of the successful egg sale, Southeast Fareland was swarming with eggers. In keeping with the land grabbing ethos, six men immediately staked their claim, declaring that the islands belonged to them exclusively due to rights of possession, and incorporating as the Fireland Egg Company. Egging the lucrative proved a tough way to make a living.

The season spanned eight flurried weeks between May and July, during which time, it was man against mirror, and both parties against the goals, climbing near vertical rises of crumbling and it. The eggers carried clubs in their free hands to fend off the attacking birds at the same time stuffing the eggs and especially designed egg shirts. Giant gunny sacks with multiple pockets scalp wounds were common. So I just have no I mean, I've never wanted a fortune

that bad. I don't think. Yeah, and it's it's not even a fortune because these guys. After the first guy, he makes a fortune, right, he makes sense to me. You go out, you have like one real shitty weekend, and you come back alive, and you buy a burlesque call and you sell sex for the rest of your life. Um, under,

I understand that these guys are like day laborers. And it's it's so bad because the goals eat the mirror eggs, so like while you're climbing up the rock, they're like die of bombing you and like biting into your skull and clawing at you to get at eggs. Ah, it's a bad gig. It just sounds like a metaphor for modern day San Francis. Yeah, yeah, it's not any different today. I would describe what they're doing is like driving for Uber, yes,

but more ethical. Yeah, though it's a it's a fair wage, Yeah, yeah, exactly. I'm sure they were getting a better wage than Uber driving. Oh man. Yeah. So. Harper's magazine sent a journalist down to the fire Allons in the eighteen sixties to look at the egging operation, and we have from that reporter a first hand account of of what it was actually like. And I'm gonna just hand making vomit noises. From fifteen to twenty men are employed during the egging season and

collecting and shipping the eggs. They live on the island during that time and rude shanties near the usual landing place. The work is not amusing, for the birds seek out the least accessible places, and the men must follow, climbing, often where a goat would be. All would almost hesitate, But this is not the worst. The goal sits on her nest and resists the robber who comes for her eggs, and he must take care not to get bitten. The

mere remains until her enemy is close upon her. Then she rises with a scream, which often startles a thousand or two of the birds who whirl up into the air in a dense mask, scattering filth and guano all over the aggres. So just ship clouds raining down on you and into your open scalp wounds from the goals that have dive fopped you as you're doing your job, almost as high because you're you're you're really high up, so don't you go. Yeah yeah, and if you fall,

you'll die horribly. Um and yeah, it was. The men who did the job tended to be as shady as you would expect of people who are willing to do that kind of work. The egg company hired mainly Greek and Italian immigrants who were comfortable with danger and desperate for money. And we all know what Italians are like, right I don't. It's very anti Italian show billy. Yeah, No, it's fine, it's fine. I know what they're like. Yeah.

So the rocks they scrambled up and down were slick with water, and bird ship men fell all the time, often from great heights. When workers died, they were just entered into the company log books as missing. For an example of one death. Oh man, yeah, it's funny, and I was okay, I'm making a bad joke with the

shadiness of the Italians. But one of the aspects of this that's really interesting is that a lot of the Italians involved in this were like leftist labor organizers and this was just like the only work they could get because it was a bad time to be a part

of organized labor, especially as things get into the eighteen sixties. Um. So that's a dimension of all of this too, is that there's like these these guys who are kind of locked out of the main economy because of you know, uh, companies not companies not wanting to hire people who want to stand up for their rights as labors, so instead they get dive bombed and covered and ship. Um it's yeah, you don't want to know, you don't want to work

for the man, you can work for the birds. Well, and then it's also probably one of those gigs you don't know one tails you what it's really like, and then you learn what it's like when you get out there. Yeah, And the point I'm making by bringing this up is that a lot of these guys, a lot of them did have you know, some sort of criminal background. The others, you know, being a labor organizer in this period means

you've been in a lot of street fights. And the point I'm making is that these are really tough people who are comfortable with violence, and that's going to matter in a bit. Yeah. Yeah, But first I want to talk about people dying on the job, because that's always fun. It's can I just say, let's do the job pitch where if if you're just like, okay, yeah, you gotta

ride a boat out there. Okay, that's fine. I don't care about that, and then you like heights trick, I don't care about that, like caney climb yeah, who you just climb up there and get that egg, all right. Also, the birds will they're gonna try to hurt you, all right, and you're gonna get covered and ship there go your open head wound. That's what I was gonna say. Yeah, they're also you know how clean birds are. They're gonna ship in your open wounds. And then that guy goes,

now I get how much an egg? Yeah, I like like ten cents. You know you're getting paid. You're getting paid. It's not bad. So for an example of one of the kind of one of the ways people died horribly doing the egg job. In eight fifty eight, the Daily Alta, California reported that an egger quote missed his hold while robbing a goal's nest over the edge of a precipice, and falling was dashed to pieces on the rocks below. That's how you wants Yeah, that's instant. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

I hope so, I hope it wasn't slowly dashed to pieces. Uh. And you know nobody went for that body. They just said, oh, I didn't show up to work today. Yeah, no way to know. Send his wife and children a bill for the passage over. So the eggers developed a distinctly bleak view of their work, due in part to their forbidding

surroundings and in part due to the death rate. Stories began to spread that if an egger spent too much time on the islands, he would start to see his name spelled out in the markings on the mirror shells. But still, the money was good, and the Pacific Egg Company was soon harvesting thousands of dollars and eggs every single trip. It was not long before other entrepreneurial types noticed this, as a journalist for Harper's wrote, of course there was an egg war. The prize was too great

not to be struggled for. Well, yeah, you're gonna have a war with the eggs. Yeah, it's good to know that the that the press has always been stroking just say, any type of war. Yeah, if you guys tried shooting at each other yet, I'm gonna stand over here, maybe give it a shot. Uh okay from the Devil's Teeth quote. There were NonStop dust ups as rifle gangs battled the company for the right to harvest the eggs. On more than one occasion, soldiers were summoned to calm things down.

The battles often lasting for weeks, involving threats, fist fights, barricades, and small arms, and during those interlude San Franciscan's would go eggless once again. Sometimes the ejected gangs would hide in see caves instead of sailing back to San Francisco, waiting for the authorities to leave so they could take another run at the eggs. One tenacious group steered their boat inside Great Mirror Cave and remained there for two days,

during which they were drizzled non stop with guano. The ammonia build up inside the cave killed several men and the danger. They were piste to death, and the dangers didn't stop once the cargo was collected. Boats returned running eggs to the mainland were hijacked with regularity, so we got egg pirates in the mix. Well that's why, as you're describing this, it just made me laugh because I'm like, man,

if you gamify, humans are down for whatever the fucking prizes. Yeah, yeah, wait here, while my friends choked to death on bird piss, we're gonna make money, right, will beat those guys. Yeah, just as long as I get more eggs than the other assholes exactly. Now. What was already a very complicated and violent situation was compounded by some decisions the government made in eighteen fifty two. They decided to build a

lighthouse on the Farrelland Islands. This was a sensible call geographically, because ships kept running into the rocks in the dead of night or during storms. It's a good place for a lighthouse, um. But actually building a lighthouse on such inhospitable terrain was easier said than done. Stone had to be quarried on the island to create the lighthouse. Workmen had to haul bricks up the hillside on their backs,

it was just a miserable, miserable, miserable job. They completed construction in eighteen fifty three, and just as they were about to begin operation, they had to like the last thing they had to do. After spending like more than a year agonizingly quarrying rock to build a lighthouse, the last thing they had to do was take a lens up into the tower. And it's soon as they try they realized that the lighthouse wasn't big enough for the lens to fit. So they had to knock down the

lighthouse and rebuild it two years. Oh I think one dude about how well it was like halfway up. It's like how you get you know what? Never mind, never mind, never mind, mind. I'm just not gonna say anything. I'm gonna not be here. I'm gonna quit tomorrow. Uh So, in eighteen fifty five they finally finished the damn thing. Several lighthouse keepers and eventually their families moved on to

the island as its only permanent residence. Now this immediately caused problems with what by then was just called the Egg Company. See, the Egg Company claimed to have a total monopoly on the island, a fact which was disputed by the government and basically everyone else who wasn't the Egg company names. No, that's on purpose, like when you name your cat cat or tiger. Well no, I think what they're doing is like, now there can only be one and we are the egg the Egg Company. We

we will abide no competition. Facebook ship drop the Yeah, I mean Facebook was the Egg Company was the first investor in Facebook. I think it should just be company. Drop the V. I think the the I think the V is the key. The is the key, that the is the key. So yeah, the Egg Company says, all of the eggs and everything else on the fairylands are our property, um, which again they have no legal right to. But they do have guns. So the lighthouse keepers do

understand America. They understand America. That said, the government had guns too, So the Egg Company couldn't like kick the lighthouse keepers off, but they could repeatedly threaten them with violence. Um. Now, but the problem what would I don't understand that they were like, hey, we'll gonna get you. Yeah. Part of the they were like, we don't. You can't. If you're going to be here, you can't eat any of the

eggs or anything else. That's on the island, and they were like, but we live here and it's the government's island. So that starts the problem, um, and what kind of continues it is that. So in eighteen fifty eight, this guy named Amos Clift gets hired to be the head keeper of the lighthouse, and Amos kind of organize the other lighthouse keepers by saying like, hey, guys, our pay is complete. Ship, like, we're not getting nearly enough money. We have to live in this terrible death island in

in the ocean where it's always miserable. The least that we can should be able to do is make a funckload of money selling these eggs like these we have a right to this island. The egg company people don't, So why why don't we try profiting off of this ship, Like, hey, you guys, we've got to have at least one perk here, yeah, yeah, and that park should be getting rich off of the egg rack. Yeah. Now, the problem is, of course there's

only a few lighthousekeepers. The Egg Company is basically a mafia at this point, including the fact that it's filled with Italians. Um. So, for the most part, the outnumbered and vulnerable lighthouse crew tried to pick at the margins of the company's egg business and avoid direct confrontation. Yeah. It worked for a little while. You got a guerrilla warfare that Yeah. Amos, however, was kind of impatient. Uh. He was not willing to just nibble at the edges.

He wanted a big cut of that sweet sweet egg company. And he was also a heavy drinker um which worked at a lighthouse. You know, man, that is that's a being ambitious and headstrong and and and an alcoholic. Yeah yeah, so, author Susan Casey, he doesn't didn't write about being a drunk.

But author Susan Casey, who went through all of the letters he sent home to his family during this period, noticed like the way that he wrote would change over the course of a long letter in a way that heavily just drinking quote and almost all his letters, which tended to run several pages, clifts. Elegant penmanship starts off impressively and then morphs into a scrawling mess as the

handwriting degenerates. The complaints about his post became increasingly bitter, and his plans for total egg dominance grow larger in scale, and a letter to Horace was one of his family members. Written on November fifty nine, he outlined the situation. Before I came here, this egg company used to have things all their own way. But since I have been here, things have taken a turn, and they have ascertained that

I am not as easily bluffed. I think it will now be settled in the egg company driven off the island. I shall not abate my efforts in the least, and if I succeed, I may perhaps reap the benefits. Uh man, he's gonna get the eggs. So imagine, I mean, just from the another perspect like the egg company, this dude shows up and they're like, it's already a nightmare here, like this is hard enough. Do you think that they called him a rotten egg? Behind back? Thank you? I've

been holding them in from the entire podcast. I like to think any of these dudes use puns. No, No, he was too drunk and too obsessed with eggs. Do you want to know who's not too drunken obsessed with eggs? Though, Robert? Oh, Now, the people of Raytheon are are big into the egg business. In fact, there's the only right now are our friends who are behind such wonderful inventions as the missile guidance chip for the hell Fire missile and the missile guidance

chip for the r X nine the Knife missile. Are working on a way to shoot eggs right into the mouths of hungry people. It speeds exceeding forty feet per second. Not rotten eggs, fresh eggs. We were trying to fade him to perfection. Only the fresh, so fresh they will completely penetrate up to three human bodies before shattering. That's the add ads. All right, we're we've were, we are, we are, we are we are. You try that again, buddy, No, No, we just are. We just are are. We just are

We're being That's true. Yeah. So for Amos Clift, the egg racket meant a chance at more money than he like, than he would ever have a chance of making anywhere else. As he wrote back home to his family, the egg seasons the months of May and June, and the profits of the company after all expenses are paid, is every year from five to six thousand dollars quite an item. And if this island is government property, I have a right to these eggs, and I am bound to try

and get it. And of course he also added that once he got rich off of the eggs, the government could kiss his foot. Um. So interesting, guy, Amos, He's decided this is how he's going to make his fortune, and he's kind of revealing his moves though too a little bit. Yeah. Yeah, this is the government's island, so I have a right to the eggs, but also suck the government once they get rich. Yeah, like, hey, man, just leave the last part out, Dude, I think you

gotta play it. Yeah. Yeah, he wasn't. He wasn't a smooth customer. So Amos organized the lighthouse keepers into a brisk business that partly involved discouraging eggers from landing. Because they're the lighthouse they can make it hard for boats to land. Um. And yeah, they would also like basically work with groups of eggers to stop other groups from landing and get kickbacks from them. And of course they also got involved in the business of gathering and smuggling

eggs back into the mainland. So he's gets a couple of rackets set up. Uh what did micro cause him of a city? Yeah? Yeah, it is a very San Francisco story. Yeah, it's nice. Just immediately like we can like this racket work for everybody. I think there's a little bit of money around the edges of this. For me, all I got any was over some people who aren't me. Just every American story ever is just going like, oh I got this, Yeah you can. There's a lot about

America in this tale. So right around the same time as Amos is getting his his his egg scheme off the ground, San Francisco's Daily Alta newspaper reported that the egg company had begun to wage an open guerilla war against the state, breaking up government roads as well as drawing lines fencing off chunks of the island and putting up warnings that light keepers and their families could only

cross on pain of death. So like destroying the roads that were built to allow the lighthouse to function um and to allow like like basically trying to cut off their supply lines, fencing off the areas where the eggs are, and threatening to murder government employees who cross onto egg territory. In June of eighteen sixty is things escalated to a point where lightkeepers felt unsafe to travel outside without rifles.

Clift wrote a letter to his family that we are now in the midst of the egg season and the egg Company and the Lightkeepers are at are now. Soon after this point, the Eggers launched a full frontal assault on the Lightkeepers, trying to force them off the island at gunpoint. In July, one of the assistant lightkeepers was ambushed and injured. Justice Clift was plotting his response to

these offenses. The US government realized what was going on, and rather than getting broiled in an egg based insurgency, they fired Clift for the undue assumption to monopolize the valuable privilege of collecting eggs. I hate to side with the government that they got a goddamn point on this one. This kind of seemed like he was a problem. Do you take any of his relatives, like he had some smartass cousins or stuff. They're like, dude, you've got to

read Amos his egg letters. They are awesome. I think he might be. I think he might be in some real trouble. He's talking about gunfights. It's but he's talking about eggs. It's the funniest ship you have ever heard, uh people. Yeah. So, at the same time that the egg company men were sparring with the lighthouse Keepers, another rifle egg poaching company was forming with the goal of conquering the Farrelland Islands for themselves and taking them from

the Egg Company. While the Egg Company was American run, this new company was made up entirely of Italian immigrants. Both claimed to have legal possession of the island, and it seems unlikely that either did. From a local news article at the time quote the chief of police and

a posse visit the scene. For a long time two years or more, the right to gather the eggs on the Farrelands Islands has been in dispute between rival companies, and rumblings of approaching troubles between them have been heard for a year. One of these companies has composed mainly of Americans, and it is known that the far as the Farrelands Egg Company. The other is made up of

Italian fishermen. The American company claimed to have had original possession of the island and issued script in the usual

manner of corporations. The Italian company were subsequent claimants, and in a suit between them and Judge Hager's Court lately a writ of ejectment was sued against the Italians, who, being in part possession, refused to obey the summons yesterday, Chief Barks sent out officers Ellison Clark to arrest certain of the Italians, and when they found two parties armed to the teeth, in possession of different parts of the island and breathing defiance against each other, the officers attempted

to serve their writ but were opposed, and though the partisans of the egg companies sided with the officers, they were unable to effect the arrest of more than three of the other party, the rest vowing that they were ready for a fight and would rather be shot down than arrested. So yeah, yeah, I just I don't over eggs. Starting a farm a little outside of town would have been way easier than this. Yeah, it does seem like that. Seems like that would have been eggs over easy, and

they chose eggs over hard. I can't even look at you right now. I know, I know. I wanted to throw the microphone, but it's mine. Yeah, well that's why I missed the studio. We'd be throwing a lot. Yeah, some for somebody said they are upset that we're not throwing bagels anymore, and it's because we're own houses. That's my property. No, I yeah, when I throw eggs in the in the office, it's Daniel who has to clean

them up. And when I throw eggs in my own home, it's well, not me still, but someone else who has to clean them up. Yeah. Wow, you're gonna make your cat clean that up. Yeah, she loves eggs. Probably over the next couple of years, that's one story. There were multiple gunfights like that, and like they would send in like police and soldiers to the island and there would be like partisan sniping between the sides, and it just kept happening between these Americans what are essentially American and

Italian gangs who are are smuggling eggs. Um. Yeah, it's like the meth trade, but sillier. As the Smithsonian Institute notes, it does not get you high. I mean, if you eat only protein, you can get a little bit fucked up, but not in a pleasant way. No, were like a sick tier stomach way, feel good. Yeah. The egging season became increasingly violent. In the words of one commentator, the eight weeks between May and July evolved into an annual

naval engagement known as the Egg War. Brawls broke out constantly between rival gangs, ranging in brutality, from threats and shell throwings to stabbings and shootouts. The fighting was not confined to the islands. Boats transporting eggs were hijacked regularly. According to the San Francisco Examiner, there were many a bitter and fatal encounter between larger parties of rival claimants

in boats mounting small cannons. Back in San Francisco, the courts were barraged by a dizzy variety of egg related cases that included charges of petite larceny, trespassing, property damage, resisting an officer, and manslaughter. So cannons have entered into it. Just well, we got lawyers involved, we got the press involved. Now that. Now we've got arms dealers involved, gun runners running guns to the eggmen. So they got they got raffles, need a cannon. Oh yeah, those rifles aren't gonna work

if they brought cops into the matter. Just a cannon is what you guys need. And I got a cannon, okay. So it all came to a head. Finally, in the spring of eighteen sixty three, a man named David Batch Elder managed to gather together an army of Italian fishermen. They made several attempts at an aquatic landing on the island, each time the United States Revenue Cutter Service the Coastguard,

before the Coastguard caught them and took their guns. But eventually batch Elder and his comrade succeeded in sneaking around the cutter Service and landing on the island. On the evening of June three, eighteen sixty three, the fishermen sailed out to the Fara Loans again and were met by a group of armed Egg Company men. Isaac Harrington, the company's foreman, warned the men who were trying to land

that they would do so at their peril. In return, batch Elder shouted that they would come in spite of hell um. And then things got a little bit less dramatic, and the Italians got drunk on their boats all night and spent the evening making fun of the people on the shore. But then at dawn, but hungover Italian soldiers attempted another landing. So these these hungover Italians try to land again after making fun of the Egg Company all night, and the employees of the Egg Company opened fire for

the next twenty minutes. There's just like a massive gun battle which includes cannons on both sides. By the time the Italians retreat, one egg company man is dead and five boatmen are wounded, one of whom was shot through the throat and died a little bit later. So pretty sizeable gunfight there. Now. This finally forced the government to take action, not by banning egging, but by officially banning

everybody besides the Pacific Egg Company from egging. Unfortunately, for a reason that cannot be explained, the company found fewer and fewer eggs on the island every single year. There were fewer birds too, and again no possible explanation as to why this might have been happened. In true capitalistic fashion, the egg company decided to make up for lost profits by butchering hundreds and hundreds of seals and lions in order to turn them into oil, because again, there's not

as many eggs anymore. Now this process the clubs. We got clubs, we were using them to hit birds, but now the birds are gone. At the birds they don't want to come around anymore. Yes, uh, capitalism, I felt that in my chest. So they start butchering sea lions and seals, and the process of turning them into oil is like it's a nightmare. You basically like cut off their fat and put them in these huge pots. So you've got these giant pots of like boiling animal fat.

And since there's no money in cleaning up the rest, they would just leave the putrefying carcasses of the sea lions and the seals to rot next to these giant, like bubbling cauldrons of fucking poison fat. The once pristine wilderness of the Fara Loans were was filled with a permanent haze of at smog and the stink of rotting flesh permeated everything. So they just turning the more door like they we've won the egg war. Let's ruin the islands. God, yeah,

it's good stuff. It is. It is, like, hey, that's I think that's humanity right there. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot to say about climate change in this, including the fact that after the company wins and begin committing genocide against a second species the they also start to attack

the lighthouse operators again. Um. For one thing, the company wanted to restrict the lighthouse operators and their families from taking eggs for their personal use, even though the ships that brought them food would often be late by weeks due to bad weather, and sometimes they needed to hunt the local birds in order to survive. They also tried to force the lighthouse to destroy its fog horn, which existed purely to save the lives of boats filled with people.

But the fog horns scared the birds, so they were like, you gotta shut that thing off. Just in eighteen eighty one company men assaulted another lighthouse keeper for harvesting eggs, and in May of that year, the fucking army had to forcibly evict the egg company from the far Lands islands. So I just can you imagine being the governor and you just keep getting this this one island. You're like, God, damn, these egg guys have to send the army out over eggs.

Army is this? Uh? And that happens, by the way, that big gun battle between those two sides occurs like the same time that Gettysburg is happening. It's just easily a much more important battle. I think we can all agree. Well, that just sounds like, oh, you guys are doing fighting. We'll do fighting. You Gettysburg cowards out would really go We'll do well, you know, you guys fighting over freedom. We got eggs doing eggs. This is a West coast. That is a West coast versus East coast. They like

they're fighting. It's like racism and slavery back there. You're like, where are you guys? Eggs Yep, a slightly higher profit margin. So the egg war finally ends after like literally thirty years of escalating violence. Um and in part because they finally established chicken farms in Pedaluma and suddenly eggs every every direction around San Francisco is farms, but they weren't yet. It's I like, dude, that just immediately we started a brothel.

He's like, man, I'm not going back to that island that I Am done with eggs all gonna be I mean, eggs will still be involved, but in a lesser direct way. Yes, yes, yes, so uh yeah. Mirror eggs became much less common over the years because after four decades of taking all of of not just smashing of like not just taking eggs, but smashing all of the eggs on the island so that they would lay more eggs and than taking all

of those the bird. The mirror population on the Phara Loans dropped from an estimated four hundred thousand to sixty thousand um because you know, yeah, it was a good old fashioned genocide. So you could say there's a degree to which the industry kind of destroyed itself because it was greedy, uh, and made the environment that sustained it no longer possible. Oh yeah, I guess there's no. No, it's a thing that has never happened again and never

will happen again. Probably not happening right now. There's no signs of that happening now. No, why would we? Why would we? Why would we do the same thing repeatedly, uh, thousands of times until we all die? That doesn't sound like us. What if we just made seeds that only worked once? Well, Billy, that's the war that was kind of Yeah, it was. It was a hoot of one. And I think it's like one of those where it's like I don't think there's a bad guy and I mean there's a good guy or a bad guy on

that one. Yeah, I think the good guy is the guy who made that brothel on one. Yes, he was, and he told some people about the reck. How did you get this brothel? He's like, Oh, there's an egg island out there. I wouldn't go out there though, when people are like good, He's like, I told you guys not to go out there. Yeah. Um, it's a it's

a it's a hoot of a tale. Um. I should note here that I found out after I had finished researching and started writing that this is another episode that I think the Dollar beat me too, So like, to hell with you, Dave, I'm gonna I'll get my revenge. I wasn't gonna not do it because it was election week when I wrote this, and I don't have that much time to research stuff. But yeah, it's okay, Yeah, it just happens. It's the Internet anyway, and they're both talented,

so we did. Yeah. Um, so you know, listen to listen to both listen to both episodes, and then send Dave and I both extensive essays taking apart who did better at which portions? Um, because we I guarantee you will both read them and take them to heart. We'll just be like the press. We'll just sit over here and we'll be like, you guys should fight with guns. We're gonna be over here. That's what will let you guys fight. Yeah, I think I think Dave and I are going to do a joust over. I guess who

has the right to talk about Henry Kissinger. I don't know. Exhausting project that should be I think that's its forces should be joined. Yeah, I've talked to actually we've yeah, yeah, yeah, we've talked a little bit about that idea. It's just a matter of people's schedules. And also, like, do you have any idea how hard it is to write an

actual episode about Henry Kissinger? And it's it's when you said it too, was like I got excited, and then you get a little scared too, because you're like, he's still alive. I don't know. I've read to two books already, and I think I'm gonna need to read two more to be able to like realistically write a nice, succinct, four part episode about the man. He's still doing stuff. He's never going to stop. He's always he should be dead, Yes,

he should. If you take nothing else out of this episode about eggs, it's that Henry Kissinger ought to be dead. He may be eating those island eggs. That's a secret. I think he eats islands and hope, Well, Billy, I'm a fan of him. If he's listening, I'm yeah, same here, Bill, you got anything you want a pluggety pluggety plug. I wasn't bored too. That was really fun. Um see if you can find me, uh and oh, I have a cannabis podcast. We interview the growers and the movers and

shakers in that make up communities. Were season two. We're in Humboldt County right now, and they have opened our doors, I mean their arms in their doors to us in a way that we didn't foresee. So this season keeps getting longer. It's really cool. Now, Billy, one last question before we go out. If you were a strain of cannabis number one sativa or indica and number or hybrid I guess, and number two, what's going to be the ratio of th HC to cb D and the Billy

Wayne Davis. Well, here's the thing, oh h they're having because of you know, legality, it's tough to get a strain. There's some strains that have the higher C B d UM. It's just hard to find because what happens. And this is just from knowing, this is from doing this podcast, and I know just a smidge of the knowledge. But because of capitalism, Uh, they bread a bunch of ships and ruined some of the strains, but jacking up the THHC because you don't because you've got so many different

cannabinoid receptors that they're just now learning about. So my strain that I always go to is like I like a sativa. That's like it's it's one of the purest one is jack her air. Now most things are a hybrid now um because they've cross bread so much stuff that it's hard to find just a pure sativa or a pure endica. And again it's capitalism. And then you know, and some of the old land races are harder to grow because of capitalism. There's just no money in it. Well, Billy,

I guess that's the same. I mean no, it was kind of the same story that I just told you, but with marijuana and instead of eggs and more gunfights, but they're less publicized. Are talking? Well, we didn't answer this question. What if you were a type of egg? What type of egg would you be? Like? How would you would you be? Oh? Fucking ostrich? Hell? Yeah, go bigger, go home, Billy. I like duck eggs. Yeah, And also I just had some dullard duck eggs. Always ordered duck

if it's on the menu, and duck fat. Yeah. Recently, we went out and went mushrooming and picked a bunch of chantrells in the in the deep dark woods, and then had a fucking My friends brought over a duck they'd slaughtered, and we had and I kept the duck fat. So I was just every day for like the next week, I was just throwing duck fat, and every goddamn thing I made sounds awesome. Duck ship, duck fats amazing. Well, everybody eats some fucking duck fat. Destroy capitalism or at

least eggs. I don't know. The episodes over