Creaturekringletimes Holiday Special 2021

food dude, Creature Kringle Times. Okay, that's it. Joining me today is friend of the show, co host of George's and turn Lower after Hours, and festive holiday person Christie. I'm a Gucci mane a k A. Will Pool. Yeah, thanks for having me again, Katie, I am. I'm definitely a festive person. I've been called jolly before. Yeah. I have a pretty big beard beard and white yet um, but I have very rosy cheeks. I don't know if

you can see in this light. My cheeks are always bright red and and nobody ever notices until they think that I should be embarrassed by something. And then they asked me. Then then they pointed out and it's like, have you not been paying it? You know what I'm saying? You Okay, you know exactly what I'm talking about. It's the worst people point out that I'm blushing. I hate it. It makes me turn even redder. But this time with Ray, well, I yeah, my my cheeks stay this this red all

the time? Your Santa? Maybe I am? I I could uh yeah, there could be some I need to get, like a genealogy test or something, find out if I have anything. Yeah, did you accidentally like of Santa at some point, like not that I'm aware of, because that's the Santa Claus like Tim Allen murdered a Santa and then you become Santa sort of, I guess the highlander kind of thing. Or yeah, I think I think I

think that's how that works. Maybe I pulled out, Maybe I pulled out in front of Santa Sleigh one year and as it ran them off the road and it's in a horrible accident, and now I'm slowly turning into Santa Claus. Yeah, I just didn't clear out your gutters and then they froze and he slipped on them or something. So yeah, I mean, you know, there's all all sorts of kind of legal loopholes that you can get yourself

into a Santa Claus situation. I'm not a lawyer, but yeah, no, no, you've got you've got the beard, you've got, you've got the cheeks, you've got I think you've got, you've got the jolliness. You know, you've got the thank you. I have never been called jolly, which is uh, I think wrong. I think I'm a very jolly person. Yeah, you're like, of all the the podcast I listened to, I would say that you come across by far as the jolliest. Thank you for once in my life someone has recognized

the jolliness factor. It's true I talk about parasites. That doesn't mean I'm not jolly, you know, exactly exactly, it's not the subject matter. Jolly is all about the delivery. It's about the delivery and the disposition. You are perstantly positive no matter how you know. When it comes to the animal kingdom, there's a lot of brutal, brutal stuff that happens, but you always, you know, put a positive light on it because it's part of just how it works.

And and that's a key key element of of you know, putting your jolliest foot forward. Right, You think Santa Santa Claus doesn't see the stuff he doesn't want to see. No, he sees lots of stuff. God, yeah, that dude, Spencer. Yeah yeah, but he remains jolly. And today's shell is gonna be real fun because we're talking about Creature Kringle Times miracles. It's a miracle, Miracle on Creature Street, right, you know? Yeah, yeah, there we go, Yeah, Miracle and

Creature s Yeah. I'm familiar with that movie. I've seen it before. Yeah, yeah, where the little girl writes letters to creature clause and uh, he since her you know, the toy. I don't know that movie, The Miracle. I don't either. I know that there was like a I know there's the black and white version and then I'm pretty sure they remade it with uh, what's her name? The little girl that I could be making this up? The little girl that played um Matilda. Wait, are you

talking about Marra Wilson. Yes, who's been on this show before, been on the show. Yeah, I don't that's that's yes. Haara Wilson. Was she in Miracle on? Was she? Oh? My god? I should know this. She's a close personal friend of mine. She was in the remake, right, close personal friend of the show. Yeah, no, she was. Okay, all right, thank you. I'm thank you for solving that brain itch I just had. I could not put two

words together to describe that to you. But yeah, that's as it's as much as I'm familiar with Miracle on thirty four Street is that Maura Wilson was in it. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah, she's fantastic person, completely lovely person. I think we talked about Coral. Anyways, it was a great time, um and but we're also going to have a great time today talking about Kringle Times miracles and of course the most miracles and miracles on these creature.

Kringle Times nondenominational holiday to be celebrated by all and whoever want to. You know, we are going to talk about Immaculate Conception. Ok. We all know the story. Uh, they weren't allowed at the end, so they had to stay in the barn an Immaculate Conception, A miracle happened, the holy and divine story of Baby Condor's being born. Oh wow, I love Baby Condor. I love the Nativity

scenes that feature baby cardor. Yeah, it's it's just the the wiseman and some sheep and a baby condor, and some carryon and and the mother just like regurgitating some carryon into this sweet, blessed little baby condor's mouth. It's you know, yeah, yeah, I think the I think the three wise men were carrying gifts of roadkill. Yeah, like roadkill um, like a deer awesome, and like a coccoon. Yeah. Yes, And that's why every year and Creature Kringle Times, we

will burn incense of skunk. Uh, skunk smells. Oh no, maybe some beaver. The isn't there some kind of strong scent that beaver? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, we gotta put the condor back in Kringle Times. You know what I'm saying, I'm tired and sick and tired of Starbucks and whatnot, trying to take the condor out of

Creature Kringle Times. Creature Kringle Times, exactly. This is a holiday celebrating the divine holy birth of the cutest, the most sweet, tender and mild of animals, the baby condor. So I truly do love these birds. That's that part is very genuine California condors are huge majesty vultures with gorgeous black and white plumage and of course that saggy pink bear head and neck. Some may call ugly, I

call bold and beautiful. They have fashion choice. Yeah, it's I think, uh, stunning, you know, like look, I it's it's an avant garde. Is the word I was struggling to do because I'm not a very fashionable person, neither of I. I just said it was a choice. You're actually coming with like uh definitions and stuff. It's I I love they they are. They look like a Disney character almost. Um, just how over the top their fur collars are. Um, they are incredible looking birds. I I

adore them. Kuril de Ville only good, which I guess like Disney tried to do that in some movie like Krilla's Backstory. She's actually good. I don't don't really know. I didn't watch it, but yeah, no, they're they're they're definitely it's definitely cruel the vill uh sort of fashion, but without the sort of fraud ethics of it. Agreed, so beautiful birds. They have a wingspan of almost ten feet long over three meters, which you know, bigger than

a human their wingspan, that is. And uh, despite they're just ginormous size, they are exquisitely graceful flyers. They can once they're aloft, they don't need to flap their wings. Instead, all they need to do is glide and ride these thermal air columns, and they can soore its speeds of up to fifty six miles per hour or ninety kilometers an hour, just soaring gracefully, like like a bird shaped knife through butter. That's amazing. They have these very very

sharp beaks that they don't use to attack pray. Instead, they use them to tear through scavenged carcasses. Their bald head allows them to dive into the meat of the carcass without matting down feathers, getting dirty. And despite eating carrion and occasionally pooping on their own feet to stay cool, they are actually very fastidious and tidy birds. They are constantly grooming themselves to stay clean. They preen each other,

and they also have a complex social group. I think that sometimes we see something like a condor or vulture, it's like, oh, they're they're edgy and dark, they must be loners. But no, they have a social group, older, more dominant birds will often be given first DIBs on food before the younger ones, and they also play fight with each other and communicate with grunts and hisses. Adorable

sweet babies. Um. So, the fact that California condors are still around is itself something of a miracle if you count the hard work of conservationists and researchers as a miracle. So in n seven their population had dwindled to only twenty seven individuals. So that is it's stunning, like twenty twenty seven of these things. You could fit them in, you know, a CVS like it's it's nuts like, you know.

So this was due to pesticides, habitat loss, poaching, and overall the loss of large animals that once dominated the North American ecosystem, and so the remaining population, if left on its own, would probably have just fizzled out and they would have gone extinct. So one of the most ambitious captive breeding programs was started to try and revitalize

the population. So they captured all these birds and started breeding them and using all these weird tricks, like they would have a hand puppet shaped like a vulture to feed these little baby or a hand puppet shaped like a condor to feed these baby condors, because they didn't want them to become comfortable with humans. They that wanted A problem with captive breeding is you need to try to breed them to be able to be successful in

the wild. You don't want to have them think that humans are their mommies and daddies and then they just they don't know how to be a condor. So this program was really very successful. Now there are five hundred and eighteen calif for new condo condors out there. Uh, that is a huge improvement. Of course, they are still very rare. They're still you know, that's not that's not enough to be completely comfortable, but they and they're still one of the rarest birds in the world. But that

is an amazing success story of conservation. I see every once in a while, like whenever a headline UH is written about this conservation effort uh it, they always seem to throw in the fact that this this thing, this UH program costs millions and millions of dollars to bring this bird back. And it always it's like like it is such a minuscule amount of money to save these birds compared to the amount of money made off the destruction of their habitat and the basically basically you know, uh,

ruining the ecosystem and the food chain and stuff. Um, it's a it's a drop in the bucket of what we should be spending on conservation efforts. Obviously, that's like one wheel of like a military aircraft or something, you know exactly exactly exactly like giving it give me a break. Yeah, seriously, I uh, I would love to see one of these things in real life. Ten Conceptually, I can imagine like a ten ft is a the height of a basketball goal. You know, I go playing basketball. I know, I know

what that looks like. But at the same time, I cannot picture a wingspan that, you know, unfolded. Yeah, it's it's also because typically you would, if you are lucky enough to see one, you would only see it at a distance, and it's hard to really gauge the size of it. It's it's really incredible. I've I mean I've gone to you know, the Grand Canyon and really really looked trying to see when I wasn't able to see uh any but unfortunately, um, but yeah, they're they're they're

they're beautiful. They're so striking, and they're they're also really interesting in terms of their behaviors. Condors actually mate for life, and the male will put on this display for the female, fluffing his feathers and stretching his wings for her, and she will indicate if she's impressed by bowing her head, and then they will become mates for life, so that it's it's so it's like they proposed to each other. It's very cute. Yeah, I've been there before. I feel

your brother, I feel you trying to impress. Yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah, just like all of the neck puffs and bobbing and wing stretching that guys have to do. Gosh, so the preening and the gurgitating food, I mean, seriously trying to make sure her feet are cool enough by throwing up on him, yeah, ooping on him, Yeah, pooping on her feet all the time. It's just exactly. You know, it's a lot. You know, the dating scene is not what it once was. You know, things you do for love.

So they will lay about one egg every other year, which is you know, that's not that frequent. So that's one reason their population is often so threatened by environmental changes. Is it's not like they reproduce that quickly. Uh So, unlike with eagle chicks, there is no competition amongst sibling because you have one egg that they focus on. But if that first egg is lost, the female will actually

lay a subsequent one to replace it. And actually this was taken advantage of by conservationists to trick females into laying two eggs because they took away the first one and then the they would lay another egg and then they would like you know, raise, since the condors wouldn't raise two chicks at once, then they used those like weird condor hand puppets to feed these these uh extra

chicks that they were tricking the females into laying. So now this brings us to the creature Kringle times miracle of condors having immaculate conception. But she didn't think the

Messiah is gonna be condors. Part of these conservation efforts to maintain the condor population is regular DNA tests to make sure what's to research the genetics of the condor population, and they found that there were two males that had been born from two different mothers, and one hundred percent of each of these males, DNA came from their mothers, so no paternal DNA at all. Yeah, so this happened twice. There were two Jesus condors that we even know, uh, potentially,

this is the first. This is like like when this mother condor came home to her parents and said, I am still a virgin. I promise I didn't have sex, but I'm pregnant, like and the parents were like, absolutely not, You're you're out on you know, like angry at her for being irresponsible. This is like the first time in history where she was like, that's actually what happened, right, Yeah, I mean, okay, okay, no, shade, and I don't want it. I don't want it to sound like I'm I'm shaming

anybody that has ever been in that situation. Beautiful, but you know, like the you know probably probably you know, look, I'm a true believer. Um, we love the Lord on this podcast. But Mary probably probably you know, she probably slept over at Joseph's house. Just saying like, it's probably what happened. Mary wasn't a condor though. Are we certain of that that? Okay, okay, no, we are absolutely not

certain of that. So that's Okay, back in the immaculate this really solves a lot of a lot of the loopholes. I'm going to say in the Bible. It really does, and you'll see in more ways than one too. So so these immaculately conceived h condors of their genes from their mothers, and this is called parthena genesis. This is the production of offspring without male sperm. So one interesting thing is that in birds, when you have parthenogenesis, it

will always result in a male offspring. Is this sexism? Should we start bird feminism over this? Maybe? But the reason for this is that birds have different chromosomes the humans. So generally speaking, humans have x x or x y chromosomes for female and male genotypes, but for birds, including condors, z Z is the male genotype and z W is the female genotype. So a part the note which is the weird word for a an offspring resulting from partheno genesis.

So the parthon note is that I've never heard of it before I googled it yesterday, So the person note is always going to be male. The reason for this is the way that female gammets can merge without for fertilization, So Basically, you have a reproductive cell either containing a Z or a W chromosome, and it's divides into two exact copies. So in the absence of one of these being fertilized by sperm, it normally wouldn't, you know, reproduce.

But if these copies re emerge, so you have this thing that has split in half and then it re emerges again, it can self fertilize in rare circumstances. So this would result in either a z Z or a w W offspring. And w W doesn't mean anything in condor. It's it's not viable. There is no, it's not a viable genetic commendation, whereas z Z is viable. It would result in a mail It creates a mail chick. I keep wanting you to say zz top everything that you say zz over and over, like, I mean, yes, they

might be condors as well. Apparently it's ez top is. The origin story is condors. This is what I'm saying is whenever there's something strange, something that you can't figure out, just ask yourself weight is this a condor? And then yeah, it might clear it's not. It's not all crabs. It's all condors. So just like Jesus, these miracle condors didn't live for very long. Um so when they lived to The amazing thing is they did live to maturity, which is unusual for a part of a part of note

to do. But they did die young. So one of them died at age two, and one of them died at age eight and so forth. Perspective condors can live to be up to sixty years old. So definitely, yeah, definitely gone before their time, too good for this world, too precious and sweet, called up by the great condor in the sky. Um, you know, sacrificed for our you

know sins. I guess their father's heavenly birdhouse's. Yeah, their father was preparing a place, um, a perch, a perch in yeah, condor heaven where I mean like condor Heaven would be weird though, right because they would need carrying, and for there to be carrying, they would have to eat like other angel right, like angels of other animals. And so is there a second heaven for oh God? Okay, so this this is quickly, this rainbow bridge has very quickly turned. That would be a downer if you got

got to heaven and like your pets. You know, it's like, uh, well, we do have condors here. So although to be fair, yeah, to be fair, the condors do not kill their prey. Typically it is they feed on carrying, so you know they're scared. There's scavengers. They do a very important role in you know, they're under takers. So parthena genesis is not only found in condors. It is found in other birds like chickens and turkeys, and in other animals like lizards.

So one of the more famous examples that we've talked about on the show before is the New Mexico whiptail lizard, which is an all female species that reproduce exclusively through parthena genesis. So really amazing, and uh, you know, I think what's really interesting about this story about the condor is that it is a species that was brought back from the brink of extinction from a very tiny genetic

pool of only twenty seven individuals. So, right, is this parthena genesis happening due to some kind of genetic bottleneck, like some kind of um, you know, is there is there a genetic reason that this is happening or another alternative is that this could be a common occurrence amongst condors and other bird species, um, but that we don't know about because we don't track other bird species so closely as we do condors. We're doing these genetic tests

on these condors. We're not doing this for you know, pigeons. Uh. So like uh, And that's another that's potentially the reason why we see this so much in turkeys and chickens. It may not be because it happens more frequently to turkeys and chickens, but it's because their domesticated birds that

we keep track of more carefully. So a farmer who's like, wait, there was no male chickens here, but they gave birth to you know, or laid an egg that hatched like that would be odd and they would make note of that, whereas we are not necessarily noticing it if it's happening in other birds. So that is to say, there could be a whole bunch of Jesus birds out there that we just don't even know about. So is this a is this a holdover from the evolutionarily evolutionary linear edge

of uh, like the dinosaurs that they evolved from. Like you said, lizards do it and birds do it? Yeah, Birds, birds is dinosaurs, birds dinosaurs, but birds birds is dinosaurs for sure for sure. And and lizards do they they come from dinosaurs to yes, yeah, lizards branched off everything I think from a caromin ancestor of dinosaurs. Yeah, okay, okay, So so I'm just wondering if like this is like hidden in the genetic code where in way more animals

than we realize. But it just hasn't It doesn't have the need to be expressed for the most part anymore, unless you are, you know, unless you really as a species dove headfirst into this being the best way to mate all the time, or to to produce reproduce rather not mate. Yeah, I mean, I think it really has a lot to do with the the nature of these the way these chromosomes work, and then the nature of the sort of reproductive cells. But yeah, it is, it

is really interesting. And also in a fish. But yeah, birds and reptiles are you know, evolutionarily speaking, distant cousins, very very distant. Um may have something to do with um the fact that these are non placental animals, and and it also like just from a survival aspect, it's

probably nothing. It's it's not the best way to reproduce because you need but you need genetic diversity in order to prevent your species getting wiped out by a single uh disease or or virus or or Bacteria's exactly exactly, And that's why with some of these some species like um aphids, which are you know, an insect who reproduce a sexually, they actually sometimes go through generations that reproduce

sexually just to add in some genetic diversity. And whiptail lizards that that species they all females species that reproduces entirely through parthenogenesis. They managed to keep their genetic diversity by having actually three sets of chromosomes that they shuffle through, so so they get sort of more genetic combinations than

other species may. And I think an important thing to note with these condors is that these parthenogenic births result in these males that didn't live as long as their other male peers, and that may have been because they were smaller and weaker. So it's you know, uh, that's there may be some issues with this type of reproduction, so it's it's not necessarily a great way to reproduce. But you know, on the other hand, like maybe they

started a new bird religion over it. Yeah, seriously, seriously, Oh man, we're we're, we're we need to grow the population um of the California condor to the point where, uh they start spreading their bird religion around to other other species of birds. I'd be evangelized by condor. I'd do that. Yeah, I would too. I would too. It's like just like, no solicitors unless you're condor spreading the good word. Absolutely, I will, I will remove the Oh,

this is a different episode. I was about to say, I will clean the poop off the front of my house. Uh my, I will take down my poos safe system and allow for condors to uh to step. In a previous episode, we talked about how bees will put poo on their entrances to their hives to ward off hornets and uh, so yes, that is U. You haven't listened to that episode. That is the screaming episode, probably from a week or two ago. But yeah, I pick that out.

Miracles from the ocean, so uh, the ocean bears many gifts like sharks and salt water and kelp and fish and I could go on I won't, but uh, many many miracles can arise from the ocean, and in fact, a miracle has come to New Zealand because a bunch of sea lions are taken over their golf courses, which is I think great in my opinion. Yeah I am,

I am uh completely pro ruining golf courses. So the New Zealand sea lion is a adorable, blubbery, wonderful sea lion that used to live abundantly on New Zealand's mainland coasts, but due to over hunting and commercial fishing, their population in New Zealand all but disappeared as they fled from the mainland to the small sub Antarctic Auckland Islands of New Zealand. So they are big chunks uh. Males can weigh up to nine hundred and nine pounds or four

and females way up to three pounds or one. So females have a pretty unusual behavior for sea lions. They and they're young will move far inland to avoid rowdy harassment from males. They'll even live in like these forested areas away from the coast with their young, so that's unusual. Usually, seal sea lions stick to beaches or rocky areas near the beaches, but they all go inland a good ways, a way to get away from the rough housing of males. What do you know, males are heads and other species.

They're taking the kids and go into the forest, go into their mother in law a joke. Oh man, Okay, all right, So that's the situation. That's wild, okay, But that makes it even worse for them when human activity is near the beaches, because things like roads and fences and buildings can block their path. But despite the New Zealand sea lions absence from the mainland for so long,

they are returning to the mainland for unknown reasons. So they have slowly but steadily been coming back, and uh, in order for them to survive back on the New Zealand mainland, people are going to have to make some adjustments, gonna have to shake things up a little bit because you're gonna have to learn to cohabitate with a bunch

of sea lions. So their first yeah, exactly. They've shown up at golf courses, hiking trails, private pools, which you know, I think fair personally, Yeah, absolutely, I would be thrilled if a sea lion showed up at my pool. That would be that would that would be the coolest thing ever. Yeah, And they're not aggressive. They are large and they can bark loudly if they're feeling threatened, which may frighten people. But no, they're they're not like, they're not really particularly dangerous.

I wouldn't go up to one and like try to hug it. It might bite you. It might not like that, but you know, um, but they are much more threatened by us. They have been hit and killed on roads or intentionally killed, which there's there's a special place in like Condor hell where you know, all these Condor jesus Is go and like feast on your innards for an eternity, uh for intentionally just for the hell of it. Well, okay, all right, so we just solved that problem. The people

intentionally killing these seals are the carrion. There we go that that the condors get in Condor Heaven. Right. I think we're fine tuning this Condor religion and I love it absolutely well. Yes, it's got it's got Greek vibes, because I think that was one of the punishments of a Greek of like Prometheus, that that Titan and Greek mythology that stole fire to give to humans or something. He had his like liver eaten by vultures every day and then it would grow back and it got re

eaten by vultures, which seems harsh. You know, Okay, I don't remember that part in the Ridley Scott movie. Um that's uh. It's about as much as my knowledge of her Metheus goes. So conservationists are looking into ways to help human society and seal seciety merged together. They've like run simulation programs to try to figure out where these sea lions are going to try to go, and like put up signs like hey sea lions here, just just

note make a note of that. And actually the repopulation started in nine when a female New Zealand sea lion came to the mainland to give birth to her pup, and it has been steadily has been increasing since then. And this is really important because as of you know now, there are only about twelve thousand New Zealand sea lions in general in the world out there, and the mainland conditions for sea lions, even though it's populated by humans, it's it's more favorable to them than the staying on

the Auckland Islands the whole time. Because the Auckland Islands are colder, it may be fine for them to migrate there, but you know, to take advantage of the warmer waters around the mainland for fishing and survival. Uh may really help out their population, even if they have to share the area with humans, as long as humans are willing to cooperate, you know, sure, sure, sure, your gosh darn golf courses. Seriously, the last thing the world needs is

another golf course. But the world always needs more sea lions. Seals, wait, seals seals sea lions okay, different from seals, both completely out of brain fart for a second. That is okay, it's it's it's got seal in it, which is like, yes it does. Yeah. I mean, I, for one, welcome the return of being someone who does not live in New Zealand. I welcome the return of the sea lions. This is very this is very easy for me to say. But at the same time, I love wildlife and animals

so much that I would I would be thrilled. I'm always jealous of videos of people like that live in Alaska, U or you know, out West, or in Canada or something where like there's a moose in their yard just you know, destroying their trash can or something like that is the coolest ever I wish. I wish that would happen to me. Yeah, I wouldn't want to directly face off with a moose, but if a moose was destroying my trash can, and'd be like, you know, fair, fair

is fair that that trash can was looking at the moose? Wrong? Um, completely, I'm I'm on the moose side every time. So we all know the story of Tiny Tim and how he defeated Scrooge in psychic combat, sending hallucinations of ghosts to shame the old man into treating his father better. Right, that was and that was my interpretation of the I've I've never never thought about it that way, but that is the coolest version of was it Christmas? Was it Christmas? Carol? Yeah? Yeah,

that's right, that's right. Uh wow, that's a much so so do we think so we're talking psychic warfare here, We don't think there was any kind of hallucinogen slipped into the old man's like tea or something like that. I'm kind of using the magneto principle where it's like, oh no, not Magneto. I'm sorry, I don't know my x men so great, doctor. I was so confused for

a second. I was trying to make the connection of like, okay, professor X, Professor professor X. Yeah, professor X is is like x men code name, right, Yeah, so I think Tinyton might have just been a professor X. You know, Okay, that makes sense that psychic combat. I mean they're both British, right,

so I don't yeah. Yeah, And and like the the ghosts that they could be forced ghosts, you know from this Yeah, yeah, we don't know if they're they're falling Jedi um because that takes place in our universe as well. It's just a long time ago and in a galaxy far away, so we don't know what. We don't know what the source of those ghosts are either. Um, it's possible. I'm just saying, yeah. I mean, my favorite version of the Christmas Carol is the Scrooge McDuck version. By far

that it's a classic. But speaking of Scrooge with Bill Murray is a good one too. That's pretty sorry, I completely I just butchered your segue. You just brought up that you just brought up the Donald Duck version or the Scrooge McDuck version, and uh, that was going to be flawless. Bill Murray, We're going to talk about some birds. Now, Uh do these birds happen to have bills? They do, in fact, so excellent. Hey, you know we did it.

We we we made it, we made it work. It's a creature Kringle Times, miracle of our very I have my creature Kringle Times. Carol does feature a tiny tim except it is a tiny Bruce. And he is a bird and actually kind of a large bird and a silly bird and a sweet bird and who has a beak disability that he has discovered an incredible solution to. So Bruce is just an amazing, amazing bird. This is the heart the most heartwarming of tails. He's the best best, the best boy best parrot. So he has a keya

parrot from New Zealand. Again New Zealand, You're just rife with uh miracles. So Kia's are large olive green parrots with orange markings under their wings. And they are the world's only alpine parrots. They have a mountain parrots. Yep, you know, usually parrots do like things like forests and jungles. But yeah, living up in the mountains, looking bird beautiful birds, and they have these long, sharp curved beaks and they

will eat anything from carrion too, roots, insects, berries, and foliage. Uh. And they live in burrows near the base of trees and Kia's like many parrots, are highly highly intelligent. They are capable of solving complex puzzles, stealing car keys, getting into hiking backpacks, passport theft, damaging cars, and other fun crimes. Sheep vandalism is one of their crimes, sheep vandalism. They'll

they'll attack sheep and like pull off their wool. They are sometimes called the clown of the mountains, which I think is just kind of petty name calling because people are jealous they're so good at crime, just so good at crimes. Yeah, yeah, absolutely they are. Literally when I say passport theft, they have been documented to steal passports from people. So, you know, smart birds using their beautiful

bird brains for fun crime. Uh. And in studies, kias have proved to be able to solve puzzles to get a food reward, similar to how crows. New Caledonian crows can also do this so kias can manipulate physical items to get some kind of food. So an example is pushing a marble through a tube to push a treat off a pedestal down a ramp into a tray that they collected from, which is way too clever for me. I wouldn't. I don't think I figured that out. I wouldn't.

I wouldn't either. Um. Is there any evidence of identity theft after the stealing of the passport, like any credit card? Fraug um, because I'm I'm assuming there is. These birds sound intelligent enough to get away with that. I don't despite never having been to New Zealand. I did lose my credit card once and I did get a weird charge for like two thousand pounds of millet. So then yes,

the answer is yes absolutely. Um uh wow, okay, alright, so this is like, uh, New Zealand probably has its own like department within the government that just focuses on keya periods. Bird crimes. Yeah, bird crimes, yeah, bird crimes. Uh yeah, well, bird crimes, They're They're amazing. I think I don't usually advertise the shirts on the show, but I think we do have some shirts in our store that it's like one of them is bird crimes. The shirt and shows a bird doing bird crimes. Um, so uh,

I'll do a link in the description. Why not, it's it's Kringle times so exactly exactly so. But back to Bruce, the best, the best, smartest Kia boy. Um, I love them. I'm just I'm I hope, I'm not I hope I'm not rambling too much. I'm just so excited about Bruce. I love him so much. He's should I love him like a son. He is a Kia, but he's missing most of his upper beak, possibly due to it getting

caught in a rat trap. But he was found and rescued as a baby orphan, so already the protagonist of basically every Disney movie, right right, so his rescuers made sure that he could eat, but missing his upper beak still presents a problem. Kia's need those long curved upper beaks to preen their feathers to keep them clean and free of parasites. But Bruce is a genius u and

the world cannot keep Bruce down. When he needs to preen his feathers, he grabs a pebble, holds it between his tongue and his lower beak and uses it as a tool to comb through his feathers. The pressure of the pebble wedged between his beak and the feathers allows him to scrape dirt and parasites off. So he has been invented a bird comb for himself. That's amazing that displaying ingenuity like that, it never fails to amaze me. I should assume that animals are just so much more

intelligent than I understand them to be. But when it expresses itself like this, it just makes me realize that like animals and and of all you know, uh kind are just doing stuff that is intelligent constantly that I just don't understand, you know. Uh. This is just one that like we can relate to because it's I'll include a link to a video of Bruce in the show notes.

But yeah, it's as he's doing this, and it's really interesting to watch because he picks up this pebble repeatedly and he seems really he's very choosy about like the

kind of pebble he uses. He's got like his favorite pebbles that he uses because he's you know, using one that works well for him and there's a certain joy in realizing that, no, we are surrounded by intelligent creatures on this planet, you know, like we there's there's uh, there's just so much like amazing behaviors that just to be found in, even in kind of sad circumstances like this poor bird had had this bad thing happened to him, but he has used his his incredible bird wits to

make sure that he's happy. And there's this really cute quote by one of his rescuers because like I'm gonna ask them, like, well, why haven't you given him a prosthetic beak? And it's like, well, you know, he's he's basically figured out his own his own prosthetic, Like he's he's uh, you know, he's he's got his own system and and uh, that's I think, really really amazing because it's like, you know, sometimes these animals are that they can figure out solutions to these problems and yeah, it's

just that's it's just mind blowing. I love it. It is. I love it too. It's like you said, life wasn't going to hold him down, and he didn't let it. So wonderful. Uh So I hope Bruce has a wonderful creature Kringle times celebrating Condor Jesus. Uh. This year he's he's getting into Condor Heaven percent and they're going to have all the uh what kind of what kind of

food does he eat? Again? And like we're talking like nuts and yeah, yeah, insects stuff that carrion though, so he can hang out with like Condor Jesus and they can enjoy some carrion from some some naughty sinners who ever hurt a seal intentionally I hate them, hate them, sorry,

hurt a sea lion intentionally sea lion. So yeah, but yeah, that's that's uh, that's that's our I guess, our new Condor religion that we just came up with, which I would assume is going to become a very popular religion, probably will have you know, we'll have some crusades and so on. So that's a that's a fun thing forward to the followers. Would be called a congregration. Yeah, okay, alright, alright, just one a day and that'll be all my time. Folks,

Thank you so much. I appreciate you having me Katie. Well before we go, though, don't you want to hear the answer to uh, last week's Mystery animal sound game. I would love to yes. So the hint from last stweek's Mystery animal sound game or guess who's squawking? Was tis the season? So who do you think it is squawking? Wow? I'm so bad at this. I can't even tell, like if it's like a bird or a large like reptile or an mammal. Like I don't even know like which

wing of the animal kingdom to even start at. Uh man, I'm gonna say that is a wart hog? Mm interesting, It's going to be so off. Well, it's not quite a ward hog, but what it is is a reindeer, a baby reindeer. What's a baby reindeer? Oh? I bet that's a doorm Lots of you guys got this correctly, But I want to congratulate the three fastest listeners, he wrote in the quickest tim m Natalie in and saga E. Congratulations did I had? The only sounds I knew reindeer

made were from the famous Christmas special with Rudolph. I just assumed they talked like human beings. Yeah, I mean, you have your your sort of image of Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer just like in all of these movies just replace all of the audio with like raw raw. I wonder, so, my dad was in the film business, And have you ever seen the movie Prancer? I don't think so. No, okay, he he shot Prancer up in Indiana. Um, and uh it's a delightful, delightful movie. I wonder if

they got the sound olmes right for it. It kind of makes me want to go back and rewatch it and then leave a bad review on your dad's movie. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Um. I love when I get to witness a person like usually it's online learn for the first time that reindeers are actual animals, like are not just mythical creatures, because far more adults do not realize that, uh than than you would assume. Yeah, reindeers are are real, folks. They're

they're real, real animals. I guess it's true that you would think, like, well, they if they're depicted flying through the air, they must not be like real animals. But yes, they are very real animal They're very real animals. Yeah. Yeah that anyone who lives I guess in sort of the more northerly regions of the world already know. Yes. Yeah, um I've have a I have a friend of mine, um, very good buddy of mine who did not realize that

sloths were real creatures. He thought they were like extinct, Like he didn't exactly sloths are extinct to be fair, right. He he thought that tree sloths were similar to the giant sloth and that they were long extinct creatures and they did not still exist. And it's a it's kind of a beautiful moment, you know, when when somebody learns about the narwhall too. That's another one that like, oh, I thought they just made up that up for the movie Elf. You know that I thought that was a

mythical creature as well. There's so many animals that people do not realize until they're adults that wow, these are actual, actual, real creatures, but we only know them or associate them with like pop culture, you know, film and television. You know it's not real though. What's that birds? Their government drones? They are They absolutely onto this week's mystery animal. Sound a hint? People will pay out the nose for their poop.

What do you think? So the poop clue just makes me think of the m M or what And when I say that, I have no idea what that would sound like, so I'm just are actually correct, which means I'm gonna I'm gonna put a bunch of jingle sound effects on that. So I'm sorry apologize. You don't want to apologize for being right? Okay, Okay, the nose clue. I did not know what the nose clue was about.

That threw me off. Heck yeah all right, yeah. Well, unfortunately for you listeners, I jingled out the correct answers, so you will still have to guess if you think you know the answer to this week's mystery anal sound game. Guess who's squawking right to me at Creature Feature Pod at gmail dot com. I'm also on Twitter at Creature feet Pod. That's f e A T, not f e T. That is something very different, and on Instagram at Creature

feature Pod at Instagram. Uh. Thank you so much, will aka a Christie Yeatin for joining me for this most best of miraculous of holiday spatials. Where can people find you? Thank you again for having me. It was a blessing um uh to be here. We want to invite the entire congregation uh to uh find me on Twitter at Wopple House w A P P L E h O U s E UM. I also host a podcast about the Dan Lebotard Show for LeBatard Show fans. Uh. And also I do a podcast with some friends of mine

called George Center. Um we kinda. The tagline is kind of like ship posting for your ears. Um so that's ah, it's very funny pod. We have a good time. So come check us out there. And uh, yeah, Katie, thank you again for having me on here. Thanks for coming on and thank you for listening. If you're enjoying the show. Uh, and you leave me a rating and review. I read

all the reviews. I love them. I like put them up at my wall, use them as you know, my daily motivation, you know, like iTunes user, go coup super say and said meat pod. You know, like that's great, it makes my day. I made that one up, but I do. I do actually read all of them. I really appreciate them. And uh and thank you so much to the Space Classics for your super awesome song. XO. Lumina Creature Feature is a production of I Heart Radio.

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