Thinking Sideways: Kentucky Meat Shower

yours too. And hey, if you've already got one, you can always still do something because there's lots more need out there. You can donate money to your local cat and dog rescue, or you can donate your time meet lots of cool critters and it's very rewarding and meet fun people and you'll really do some good. So hey, do what you can. It's quickly strords. Hi, this is Steve Devon and this is episode number two hundred and

seven of Thinking Sideways. Really I did not know, yes, episode well, we call it out every week, but it's really easy to to kind of miss what number it is. And I realized, hey, we're getting up there. Wait, well, what do we do every week? Drink? Yeah? What you do? Just me water? Now, this week, as every week, we are going to be talking about a unsolved mystery. And since it's my turn, I decided that I would dig into the old history book and find us a rather

old story. It is. Uh. This week we are going to talk about what a story that is. God, it's almost almost a hundred fifty years old at this point, and for dred and fifty years. No, no, no, no, it happened in eighteen seventy, six hundred forty years h. I was just looking at the six I'm at yeah, yeah, no. This week we're gonna be talking about the Kentucky meat Shour. Uh. And this is a listener suggestion. This was suggested by Blake and a whole bunch of other people. Blake's the

first one that's on the list. But I know that we've gotten this many many times because this is an oldie, but a goodie, right, popular little story. It's a fun one. I didn't realize it. You know what act if you're fun, if it's fun, if you're not actually there on the spot, well yeah, but you're not a cat. But Here's the thing is that you see this story one list and it seems like kind of a simple story and whatever. And then I actually started cutting into it and found

out what was there. Was like, oh, this is good. I mean carving into carving into it. So let's turn up the heat and let's see what we can make happen. Alright, was the clumsy pun? It was, But it's my week and I'm always clumsy with the puns. Okay, shall we begin. Our story takes place on March third, eighteen seventy six,

just outside the town of Olympia Springs, Kentucky. According to reporting at the time, Mrs Alan Crouch, who, by the way, being a woman, didn't deserve to have her name listed in the official recounting because it's the eighteen hundreds and she's a woman. Apparently, because I dug everywhere and I could not find her first name. Actually it's Mary. Did you find it? God? I kept looking and looking and look at it. It couldn't find it. It was really

making me mad. Do you post some links about the story? Was it in there? It? No? Because I kept looking in the old newspaper archives and I think that's what was throwing me off. Okay, all right, well it is Mary Crouch, uh, and she was outside making soap, and she and her husband Alan were both in the yard. This is at sometime between the hours of eleven am to twelve o'clock, the meeting hours at some place they call it chapel our. Yeah, and they're out there, they're

enjoying the day. This is, according to the official narrative, while they're working, when suddenly it began to rain. And we don't mean the normal kind of wet rain that you and I know a winter, right. Instead we mean the gross, meaty kind of rain, you know, the other kind of rain. Yeah. Yeah, there's there's wet rain, there's hail. And then apparently this story the next phase is meat.

So so all of her getarian listeners, you're not gonna like this episode, um so, according to the official narrative, though, for somewhere between two to ten minutes, depending on the accounting that you read, Mary and Alan Crouch watched as what appeared to be small pieces of meat fell from the sky. They described they none of it was baking though, so it was terrible, but they described it as being quote delicate shreds as light as a snowflake unquote, while

others were quote a solid lump three inches square unquote. Again, this is I've kind of found a bunch of sources kind of come up with my averages here. But my average size for the material that was falling out of the sky is somewhere is around five by five centimeters, which would convert to about two by two inches, with the largest chunks being somewhere between two and three times that size. So there, yeah, out of the sky at

this point. So were the crouches the only people who saw this happen, Yes, so they are the only ones to witness the event. There will be others who very shortly show up, but they're the only witnesses that I can find record up to the meat actually falling from this guy. Correct. So the couple they watch in amazement and probably you know, stupefied as this is happening. Their cat, however, goes into an immediate feeding frenzy and runs outside and

gorges itself on this sky sky filled bounty. Name uh full? Okay, So I have no idea what the it was. The cat was full a yeah, absolutely, like your typical farm cat in those days probably didn't get a great diet. Oh it's not. Yeah, no, no, it's not like you weren't feeding the cat and hoping that it would catch mice. The cat subsisted on whatever it costs. So this was a literal bounty from heaven. Yeah. Yeah. So the couple they watched this happen, shortly one or two people show

up at their house. And this is weird because I don't understand why these in both of the names of these people, I can't really find record of did you find him? I did not, dang it. I screwed up in the first one, not the second one. But these people show up, and at least one of them actually ate the material that fell out of the sky. Would you eat that crap? Oh no, no no, But in this d and age, you know, we have different sensibilities. But at least one of the people did consume some

of the material and said that it tasted like mutton. Alright, I'm not willing to say that I would have been above eating that. Yeah, I mean like today, yes, in like the eight hundreds, maybe not, maybe, maybe not, Okay. I would just be concerned that maybe there's some human flesh in there somewhere, and so I probably eighteen hundreds.

I probably just would have assumed it was like God giving me something beautiful, and I'm kind of like a cat apparently just been like me, it's intended just for me. A well, remember to waive your paw when you need to use the box, and we'll take a break. Thank you. Okay, So the reporting that I have found, again, the numbers are going to vary from site to site that reported. But the meat fell on an area of approximately one

hundred by fifty feet. If we convert that to meters, that's going to be thirty by fifteen meters, and it coded it pretty pretty solidly. But by the next day, of course, this material is all begun to spoil. It's all going south, which is not surprising. Mess I can I cannot imagine. All right, get up, honey, we gotta clean the meat off the fence and the law and everywhere. Like I couldn't imagine the screw. Just let it sit there and eventually dry out. It'll go away, get it. Yeah,

it's revolting. Yeah. Local scientists and investigators would come out to the home and they would collect samples and they would attempt to preserve them, and what they would do is they apparently they were putting them in jars a glycer in which um glycering is. Joe helped me. I suddenly cannot think of what that is. Hell, I can't remember either. It's like I didn't realize I didn't know. The only thing gliser is gonna do keep it from

air well. Yeah, but it's also but that should also then keep it from decomposing, because it's Oh god, I know they used to use glycerin in a lot of old tiny stuff as a preservative. All I know is that they still have a few of these samples laying around in jars today, but those are preserved formaldehyde. Oh yeah, the formaldehyde is going to be for a long term preservation, much better. Yeah, obviously the glycer didn't quite cut the mustard. Yeah,

that seems silly. Yeah, they're still around. I had no idea if they still look like what they used to look like. But I don't know that they do. But could you You couldn't test them since they've been in formaldehyde, and I would I would say that after a hundred years and formaldehyde usable DNA has probably been destroyed. Yeah, I mentually you could probably still take slices, look at the cell structure maybe at least like if it's meat

or something else. Yeah, we'll get into some of that in theories because we've got some information on that during the theory section. But for overall preservation, yeah, they don't. They don't look the same. Obviously. They don't look nice and fresh and pink and white like they did on day one when they fell in Mary and Alan Crouch's yard. Twinkies were originally based on you don't know, um, so the samples would be examined by scientists and a whole

slew of suggestions would be made. Yeah, totally was, and people kept saying, oh, well, it's got to be this, it's gotta be that. I mean, some people said that it was bear meat, while others, I'm guessing based on the taste tests, said it was mutton. Yet others said that it was lung tissue, which is creepy and weird. And yet other people said that it had to be an analogy of some sort. So there's a huge bevy of theories of what this stuff really was that that

showed up in these people's yard. I don't know that if somebody were to just you know, sit me down and say, taste this meat and tell me what you think it is. I definitely couldn't say like mutton necessarily, but I mean, you know, we don't need a lot of mutton. I was gonna say, actually, mutton is obscenely distinct.

Is that? Yeah? I haven't eaten a whole lot of mutton, but I have eaten it, and it's it's one of those things where when you bite into it and you taste it, you know you have you ever had bear? I have not had bear, so maybe it's the same as bear. No bear again, Bear is one of those gamy animals that gamy animals all kind of taste the same as way as well, and gamy animals are much different than mutton. It's I don't know how to describe it. I'm not a foodie, that's true. I don't know either.

If I haven't had muff, mutton is so many years after gotten how it tastes, so I had no idea. It's weird. It's a good No, No, I don't think it's good. I'm not a fan of much. We're gonna get some good emails about that. Oh well, that's fine. You know what I like to I like my sheep sheared, I don't like them barbecued, So that's that's fine with me. Yeah, I mean, we've got a po box. Please send us button. No no no no no no no no no no,

Please do not send us buttons. Okay, fine, okay, send us just jerky or something, Okay, believe it or not. Unlun well, actually this is kind of in line with your last one of your last episodes. The story was amazingly short, while we had a relatively decent section for theories, and we're in one of those again. Oh yeah, was it hell dot Com? I don't know. All I know is that we're about ten or fifteen minutes into this and we are already theories. Yeah, which is yeah, it

just kind of it's the actual story itself. But mean, there was a big, you know, aftermath too, because it was speculated on for years like plus yea by scientists and everything, but especially still around the time that it happened, though, there was a matter of intense speculation for at least a couple of weeks, a couple of months something like that.

Actually I think a couple of years, because there was a couple of scientists who I remember the things that they wrote because they didn't get because it took so long for some of them to get the samples that you know, I mean, think about it. It's eighteen seventy six, and it takes a long time for a horse to travel across the country to deliver a vial of something for somebody to look at. So we actually was years that this thing continued to have information, not necessarily new information,

but information per se to come out about it. Did you see, by the way, that that that plaque that's along the side of the road somewhere in the Olympia Springs? What this this sounds familiar, but please refresh my memory, sir. Well, if you go to the maps and you type in Olympia Springs, Kentucky, and then you know pictures on the left, you know, so you click on the picture and it's

his plaque. It's a roadside plaque, really nice like bronze plaque, and everything talks about Oh, you know, in this year, you know, the citizens of Lexington came out to what was it called mud Lick Springs. That's what the springs ever called mud Lick Springs? And wait, I thought it was the escaped the collar epidemic or something. And in this year the Battle of eighteen twelve this happened. Then in this year theout the Civil War battle was fought nearby.

But they didn't mention the meat shower at all. Interestingly enough, maybe they're embarrassed about it. I don't know, it's gonna say they're they're in the meat closet. Yeah, that is just that is just unfortunate. Yeah, so I guess we're ready to talk about all right away. Let's just dive into theories. A little butter in the panel, Let's see what comes out. You've never cooked meat. I don't think you've ever cooked meat, is what I'm starting to think.

Oh wait a second. You have never taken a piece of beef and thrown had gotten sizzling hot butter and thrown a thin piece of beef in the pan. Of course I have. I just keep questioning your insistence that we're just gonna quote see what comes out, like you don't know what's going to come out of that pan that you've just put in. Listen, I'm trying to maintain an air of mystery. Year. Come on, we're a mystery podcast, alright. Nobody, nobody,

can smell the aroma of what I'm cooking. Theories, Yeah, alright, theory number one, Well, this was the initial suggestion is that it was a bacteria. According to a man named Leopold Brandies, the material was actually cyano bacteriak algae, and this particular algae was known to look powdery and rather unassuming when it was dry, but when it was wet, it would swell up when it came into contact with water. And I think we've all probably seen this kind of stuff,

because it's weird powdery stuff. You'll see on the forest floor around the base of trees sometimes and then you'll come by and it's this weird kind of whitish, gelatinous jelly stuff during a rainstorm. That's the kind of stuff that he's talking about here. He said that what had actually happened was that this stuff was around the area and all over the property of the Crouches and that and somehow it got wet. This is a little contrary to the story, of course, because according to the Crouches

it was a nice cloudless blue sky day. So where the water come from from? Well, yeah, the well, the thing about it is is like if it's been present in their yard. Wouldn't this be happening routinely? And that's exactly exactly the problem with this, this initial theory. And to answer Devon's question, what he's saying is that this stuff swelled up and then they immediately grabbed it and threw it in the glycerin so that it didn't dry back out. Sure, No, that's fine, that's not what I'm asking.

I'm asking like they're saying, well, like, where did the water come from? I don't know. I feel like I can explain where water just happened to appear way better than I can explain where meat just happened to appear, because they're saying like it was a cloudless, beautiful day

and the meat just came raining down from nowhere. Like I'm way happier to especially living in Portland, Oregon, where I know you can look up even it's pouring rain on you, and you can look up and it's blue sky right above you, and somehow it's pouring rain on you. Happy that we would have nicknamed this meat algae a long time ago if it looked like meat when it got wet. Well, we don't know that the crouches were

particularly intelligent humans. I mean, just in general. It doesn't have to just it was a bacterium mutation, you know, if this was something that happened naturally on a regular basis to look like this, because in the descriptions, and here's what we haven't talked about so far, is in the descriptions, like people took the knife to this material and said that it had the striations of muscle with little bits of gristle and fat in it, Like it looked like you cut it out of a cow or

a pig or a chicken or whatever, not gelatinous like you would expect something to be if it was just a cyanobacteria that swelled up at the introduction of moisture. So the problem with this is right off the bat, that does none of that make sense? I think another problem with it, too, is that there was reportedly blood on the ground around around the chunks of meat. There

was some blood. Was it blood? I struggled with that. Yeah, I mean go ahead, Joe, I because I was like, reportedly people said that there was some there was some red stuff presumably blood on the ground, and so it's like, well, you know that would come from me, but from this bacteria stuff. Probably not. Yeah. Plus, you know, bacteria has been scientifically proven cannot tastes like mutton. Yeah. Yeah, she has done extensive studies on this. No, I agree, it's

it's a bad theory. I just wanted to know. No, you just wanted to put more holes in it. I totally understand. Let's let's move on to the next theory, which I have titled space meat. Well, you know it does microwave quite well. But space meat was one of the very first and honestly funniest explanations from the time

that this happened. According to the reports by the quote unquote experts, the meat was actually from meteors and I don't know, I don't know how we're spelling meat yours, but it was from meteors that had come into contact with the Earth and fallen from space backwards. I mean, doesn't that doesn't don't they fall from space and then come into contact with the Earth. I think this is I think with the way I wrote this was, I meant it came into contact with the Earth's gravitational pull

and fell from space. Um, but you love it. If you want to finish this, well yeah, sure, I just want to clarify this as a theory from Yeah, totally, totally, this is from is going to make that very clear. Okay, So the theory goes, because there was no bone fragments found in any of this material, it must have been the remnants of an exploded planet of creatures that had

come into the path of our planet. And then of course that debris field of exploded rock and planet and creature matter was then drawn in and fell to the Earth from space because we went through the debris field of that dead world. And so so it's all aliens. This is literally it's alien chunks. Is what was falling from the sky of spectacular like meteor crashes around that time too, though, right ye if yeah, rock meteors, yes,

not meteors. Yes, you're right. If if this were true, there should have been a lot of meteors coming from the sky in general, in in the time frame. No, there's not. I'm sorry, simpler thing, If this were true, the meat would have been cooked or vaporized. It should have been burned up on re entry. Yes, yeah, you would think it would at least be medium. Well, but no, that is like a monster. Well, although I guess on the other hand, and just to you know, play the

aliens advocate for a minute. We don't know what life looks like on other planets. For all we know there is some sort of meat that is resistant to high velocity. It does need to be cooked at a thousand degrees for forty seven minutes. Yeah that the surface of their planet is like a thousand degrees So yeah, this is like a chilly day for that. Yeah, we're actually keeping the meat nice and cool for that. You know, this

is this is it's fun. It's a fun bunk theory because it is literally from the era eighteen seventies six theory before anybody actually knew how space worked or had a good, you know, better understanding of how space worked than it wasn't a commonplace and there were there were people that understood gravity and and all that stuff. Yeah yeah, yeah, that's why I was trying to So there were actually alien creatures and trunks of aliens that came down to Earth.

That's what this is a recounting. But you know, we know that because we know this isn't because everyone knows that aliens tastes like chicken and not mutton, which I mean, really is the bar that I'm working on. Well, it actually makes no sense too, because I mean, the aliens always eat us. We never do we ever write the aliens in the move No, no, now we we run from the aliens. We dropped the baseball bat when we beat the bad guy. Yeah, none of this, none of

this is actually happening. Um okay. So the next theory that and this is also from the time. The next theory is that this is meat products from heaven according to this theory. And please don't interrupt me, because I wrote this and I'm very happy with the way I crafted this sentence. It says, God giveth and God taketh, and in this instance, he gave it the people of Olympia a rain of meat. So that was probably from the local preacher and the actual entire theory right there. Yeah,

because that's entirely what I made up. Because there were I'm being a bit of a jerk, coming a bit of a pill about this. There were men of the cloth at the time who were saying that this was a bounty provided by God. But were they the ones eating it? But they were not the ones eating it, and it was I mean, if this was something that

I'm not gonna. I'm not trying to be a jerk here, but if this was something that the Lord was going to give on a regular basis to his flock, then we would have seen it on a regular basis, and that was not the case. So it's really I think it's a preacher trying to explain something and not freak as parishioners out. Maybe Alan and first name redacted Crouch, we're just so holy and good that they're the only people in history who have ever deserved a bounty like this.

You know. I bet I bet every day they were wonder both that we're just praying for some good meat, you know, God, I would just give anything Lord for, you know. And then finally got the Lord just said I'm so second crap. I just gotta dump some meat on him and say, okay, no more, no more prayers. Now it's like, Alan, will you just will you learn how to shoot and actually kills something to eat? That might be what it was. Maybe, yeah, it's hard to say.

So that's what I'm thinking. God got fed up. Yeah, that's that's that's the theory. Sorry to all the Christians. We oh yeah, no, no, We're I'm making fun again. This in the last theory, we're kind of making fun of people of the time. I don't want to make fun of the faith on making fun of the people at the time. So we we have more theories that we want to go through. I mean, I mean, this would be a short otherwise, So let's keep going as

I would like to say, let's fry up some fun. Uh. You spent the entire almost break talking thinking about that, didn't you know? I did? Totally did, I admit it. Our next theory is vulture vomit. Yeah. Yeah, people ate that, Steve, what you know, I mean, ulties eat that craft. So

why not people to Let's just go into the theory. Okay, So, after real scientists got their hands on the collected samples, they figured out that the stuff that had been collected actually had a structure to it that proved that it was from an animal and not from a plant or of bacteria. In other words, it, like I said before, it had that that striation structure that you'll see in in red meat. Yeah, like muscle fibers. Yeah, exactly. And the same scientists believe that the material was this is

a weird combination of locations. But they said it was likely from the lungs of horses or the lungs of infants, human infants, same thing, usually about the same size. Nay, yeah, God yeah, I don't know why, but I never actually, like you know, got myself along and like kind of looked at it. I wouldn't think it would look like red meat. No, it's it's a weird thing. But but there's there's a guy by the name of Dr. L. D. Casting Bind who looked at the samples and uh, in

their state. He decided that the answer was perfectly obvious and well, no, not necessarily lungs, because the lung was the initial the initial people of folks who examined it, actual scientists who examined it, said oh, well, it's gotta be lungs. And then this guy gets ahold of it, and according to him, he's the one that came up with the whole vulture vomit theory. He says, yes, it probably is meat chunks that were from the meat of animals,

not necessarily lungs per se. But what's happening is that the meat product was all carried into the sky above the crouches homes by vultures because and this is actually an own thing. Vultures are known to regurgitate their meals a k A. Barfett back up and they if they've if they've eaten too much, they will do this. And if they need to fly and they're too heavy, they

will do this. Now, to be honest or to be frank about it, they normally do this not because oh God, I too much and I just can't fly it's too much work. No, it's because something is scared them and panicked them and they can't immediately ascend into the sky. So at that point then they expel the contents of their stomach to lighten themselves up. It's a defensive mechanism. Yeah, I thought it was only when they were threatened. Yeah, it's when they're threatened. It's not just oh I shouldn't

have eaten that second cheeseburger. M just gonna let that thing come back up and then we'll we'll go down the street. I mean, that's not the way it works. Also heard that it helps to deter I mean yeah, oh yeah, yeah, any kind of predators. The the I'm gonna barf on you, dude defense mechanism has been used by vultures and whimpy college dudes for years. But I don't have some problems with this. Oh yeah, well, and I mean there's lots of problems really, and I think

it's perfect theory. Oh well, so, so here's something that we haven't talked about. Um. I read on vultures and this is not my area of expertise ornithology. I mean, I did a bunch of work on the Washington Eagle, but this barfing to get higher thing is not is really my area. So I read a vulture expert. I don't think we have one of those. Yet we have

to expand the podcast. Yeah. I looked at the list and I didn't see anybody that was a vulture vulture all would you call it a vulture alogists, vultulogist, or just a regular ornithologists with a minor in vultures? You mean with an emphasis and emphasis, yes, emphasis, I'd call them a vulturologists. Um. But no, The point is I don't really know that they just do this so that

they can ascend higher into the sky. You know, it's like, oh, well, I'm only at four thousand feet, but I want to get to five thousand, So let me herc up like everything I've ever understood about vultures is that they only do it as like a fight or flight mechanism, not

like just because they want to fly higher. You would think that mean if you're actually flying that you wouldn't want to be doing it because you'd like, you know, you you've got winds, you've got wind speed, you know, and your hurl and all that crap is going to

go right in your eyes. Well more than that, I mean, like your your primary mechanism as an animal is to survive, right, and if you can keep your energy source aka food in your body, you'd like to hang on to that escape or Yeah, but if if the choice is I mean, humans do this too, Like in in we you see

marathoners do this sometimes in an extreme exertion situations. Bodies do sometimes just expel, expel in any way they possibly can um and so you know, it's I think it's that same thing where it's like if they are in severe danger, they will do this because it helps them get away. But other than that, there's no reason. Too hard. Yeah, I'm actually I'm really glad it is that whenever I've run and every run really hard, I have not actually

experienced that expulsion. I'm really glad that I've never had to do that a few times and i've been working out, I've really pushed it a little too far and I felt i'd have a puked, but I felt kind of nauseous. Yeah. No, last weekend's race, I was really sad that I'd ate that pestro rap. I was like for the first mile and a half like that was the worst thing I ever did. But but so it's yeah, so I don't know that they would necessarily do that to attain more altitude.

But let's ignore that for the moment. Let's just talk about the herking ability of vultures, because it is rather epic. I also wonder, sorry just to do I also wonder, like how many vultures would have had to be herking at the exact same time. Hold hold that, hold that thought, yep, old a little longer, just choke it back. Um Now, okay, so if we look at because yes, vultures, as we've talked about, are known for expelling the contents of their

stomach is a defensive move. They've actually got a pretty compressive range. According to what I've read, they can herk up to ten feet which converts to about three meters in self defense, I won't get any closer than that. Yeah, so, you know, I mean there was the whole will think about the family cat running around to eat up this material, so I could see maybe that was a self defense

mechanism against the cat. Although then that says that there was a whole flock of them, and then they were doing it in mask, and I've never seen anything that says that vultures barf in mask. The trip I was on, Yeah, I know, but I have heard that they influence each other and they'll follow suit and I'll barf and not

in unison. But vulture can make his friends. But I really doubt the cat was I mean, I you know, I mean, vultures are big and they can be very aggressive, so I would not I don't think a house cat unless they were withholding the fact that their cat was actually like a freaking cougar or something like. Yeah, I mean no, like it had to be bigger than that, I think, because they like vultures will they are not They're shy. Yeah, so I think it would have taken

a really, really really big cat to scare them. But not well, okay, so let's let's um, I have a couple of ideas here. Let's let's no pun intended flesh this out a little bit. I really wasn't intending for that pun. I just realized what was coming. So during the day or in the morning of the day that this event took place, Mary Crouch was said that she was in the process of making soap. She was soap for whatever they needed, whether it be for you know,

washing your hands or washing your clothes. She's making soap themselves exactly well, to make soap from scratch, from literal scratch, you need to make lie, which you make from wood ash and animal fats and oils which you boil. And so we don't know and by the way, we don't know exactly what stage of the process of making soape she was at in so she could have potentially been rendering fat at that time. And to render fat, which

you know, let's just say it's from sheep. I'm saying it's from sheep because of the whole mutton flavored thing. But what you have to do is you have to go ahead and you have to put the fat in water, and then you that with the lie which you've already boiled, the lie comes up to the top, and then you throw the fats in and the oils in, and you render it until all the chunky bits are gone, and then you're scooping that off of the top. And by the way, this is the basest description of how to

make soap. And like the volumes are important, there's a whole bunch of information I'm not going into because well, that's science that we don't need to worry about too much. But the point is that if she wasn't very good at what she was doing, she could have at her volumes off, or she could have had a whole bunch of this material laying around on the ground a fats, which would have attracted vultures because god knows how long

that fat sat there. So you leave a whole bunch of scrap fat round and there's vultures in the area, they're going to come to it because it's free food.

Would have noticed them right the bathroom. Well, okay, so let's let's ignore Mrs Crouch for the time being, because the point of the matter is all of these birds are there and they are now eating the fat that she has laid out that she intends to render and then somehow, whether it be her running out and yelling at them or her husband shooting off a gun, they

somehow startled the flow. What do you call the flock of vultures by the way, barthology, I mean, like, I don't know, whatever it is, the whole flock of them gets startled and in there they're fleeing from the scene. They all herk up the materials that she had previously laid out, and they had been eaten, and they spew it all over the front yard. Okay, that's entirely possible. This is my theory because there's because really there's no

good theory. There was the whole the space meat and you know it's mutton, but really there's no good theory. So what I've been doing is like, okay, well, let's look at the root of the story. And the root of the story is Mr and Mrs Crouch were making soap, so let's look at what's involved in the process. The vulture vomit theory is from the time, So now I'm saying, okay, well, let's let's hypothesize from there. It's total conjecture. I totally

get that. And Cathy were wondering. Group of vultures who are in flight is a cattle. A group of vultures when they're resting in trees is called a committee, and a group of vultures that are feeding is called awake. I love it. Awake, awake, a cattle awake, and a committee. I've actually heard of a committee, had not awake before, but that's a great one. So we're referring to awake. Yes, of vultures right now feeding then become a cattle. Yeah,

I don't think it's so ludicrous too. I Mean, my problem a little bit comes in when we start talking about if the vultures were eating and then like regurgitating. It sounds like what they regurgitating was more like traditional

meat bits, not like fatty bits. Right. But other than that, you know, I'm not I can find some buy into this theory of you know, maybe she's got her giant that starting to boil over a fire outside right or over whatever, she's you know, warming it in and she's got all her stuff flaying out there, and she goes back in the house to do some other chores. You know. Mr Crauch is also in there, the cats in there. I don't the cat didn't scare them, but you know what,

the cat needs to be involved. Great, Um, they're all in the house and then you know, she comes out only to find there's a awake of vultures feeding on her fatty bits and she just goes nah, and they just go who and then fly away and then or maybe they start to fly away because I don't know how the mechanism works here. No, I mean, I just

I don't know how the mechanism works. I don't know if it's like a vulture takes off and it's like, oh crap, I'm going too slow, I'm gonna throw up, or if they like see the fear thing and they just go who and then like take off. But it is I guess it's possible because since we don't know the mechanism, they take off and then meat just starts raining down from the sky and they're like, what in

the world, Alan comes see? This is what is going on? Okay, and and and that and and that is the explo nation. I'm going to play that into this theory and the next one. And I wasn't going to talk about it until then, But it is that the crouches may have seen the propulsion of meat out of these vultures and said, we are never telling anybody about that. Uh, this meat just suddenly appeared out of the sky, because I don't want anybody to know that we cause this because it's gross.

But of course people are going to show up at our house soon and they're gonna see this stuff everywhere. We have to have an answer for it. So I mean that that would explain like they they may have. They may have narrated their own the story in a manner that avoided where they looked like the idiots for causing it by startling all of these creatures. I don't think they would make him look like idiots. But it could have just been a passing kettle of crows too.

I mean, they could have just like been flying by and something scared him. Maybe somebody Frank Herbie, you know, there's the high strong one, you know, and they pushed a little too far. We hurled, and everybody, I'll started hurling the next thing and early, yeah, hurly the high strung vulture, and the next thing, you know, it's just like all over these guys down below. Sorry guys, but yeah,

that could have been flying by way high. Yeah, Okay, of the theory so far, this is my favorite theory, but I still want, like a good thing, let me give you another theory, because again I the theories that are from the raws and today are really weak. And so I started again looking back at what was going on to try and get an idea, and um, bad science is what I'm going to call title this theory.

What I'm saying is that they were making soap, and we talked a little bit about the process of the things that you have to put into to make soap at this time. But what one of the things you need to be doing is again, you need to be boiling the ash to make lie, and then you need to have a good, good hot fire that's going for at least half an hour to an hour to get that to boil the ride, and then you've got to

start adding the other materials in. Well, it's completely possible that Mary Crouch was really bad at this, and possibly even worse trying to find a way to shortcut the process up. She may have thought, well, you know, doing this all in a kettle or in a giant pot takes forever. It's hard to keep hot, it's hard to keep the fire going, you know what a fire were? Did she use a pressure cooker, because pressure cookers in

the late eighteen hundreds were a thing. They were available, they but they were not nearly as accurate or reliable or fool proof as they are today. And so let's suppose for a minute that she is trying to figure out how to do this in a pressure cooker and she completely floods it, and pressure cookers were known to explode, and so if she's sometimes yeah, so she has chucked all this medium material in there in an attempt to pressure cook it and rend it and turn it into liquid.

And then that that container that she is using, whatever kind of pressure cooker it is, because there was I think I read about five or six specific brands at the time, and they all had flaws. But that thing then literally explodes. That would explain the hundred foot long by fifty foot wide spread of material on their property,

because I mean, that's a lot of pressure. Might have been using the pressure cooker and not actually had any meaty stuff in it either, but maybe like a neighbor kid came by or something when that went off, and in the aftermathic going like, um, I don't know, and then all of a sudden, some some other neighbors starts showing up, you know, and and they're going, like, what's happening? Man say, uh, well, you know, suddenly just rained out

of the sky over here. Oh I thought, you know, if this pressure cooker explodes, right, since we don't really know where Alan was, if he was out working in the field or something, and he just comes running and he's like he was falling from the sky, and Mary goes, yeah, I think I don't. I think it would have put the two together though they here this big kaboom and then all of a sudden crap falls out of the sky. I usually associate those Joe, You're you're presuming that Alan

was a relatively smart man. I've known more than one dude on a farm who would hear a loud boom and then see meat falling from the sky and say it thundered meat. He could also have been hard of hearing and not have heard it. He could have been working like in the fields and not hurt it. You know, meat comes from the skies. And she goes, Ellen is going to kill me, And then lucky her, he comes running. He's like, did you see this meat raining from the

sky and she's like, yeah, so weird. Also, the soap is not gonna get done today. And by the way, bad I got so distracted by the meat following that I just I don't know what happened. I burned it. Yeah it's possible. Well, yeah, I also thought other series would be like just some anarchists were making some bombs, some big bombs, and the next farm over something like that and blew themselves all the hell and there were no bones. Yeah. That that is a key point is

that we haven't talked about this before. Is that in the and I keep calling it material a real because I mean, keep calling it meat. But in the material it's fibrous tissue that is similar to meats and fats and sinew, but there is no actual bone in there. That's something to think about. I don't know what it means. I mean, I don't know what any of this means. But I do know that the description that we just gave there means that we have to move to the

next theory because we have one more theory left. Well, I was going to talk about I want to talk for a minute about Oh yeah, please, the Oregon meat shower. What we had a meat shower in Oregon? Did you not know about this? Did we? Yeah? We did? It was back I think early seventies. Whale. Yeah you've heard about the whale, right I have. I was going to make a tale about your mom making soap. Yeah, go ahead, Joe, tell our listeners. We know, but yeah they might not.

But not everybody's heard this story. But yeah, this this freaking huge whale beach just off on the Oregon coast and this was decades ago. But and actually, if you look on YouTube, you can watch the news footage. Here's here's my favorite thing about the news footage. Oh god, oh god. Yeah. But they were wondering how to get

this because it was it beats itself. And then after a few days it started to stank up the place really good, and so they decided to blow it up with dynamite and uh yeah, it turns out it didn't work out so well. But apparently, and you heard that, like like one guy got his car total because it's huge chuck of whale blow the landing on top of it, and yeah and uh yeah, and but luckily nobody got killed. Amazingly, I mean, if you could total a bug. Imagine it

could have killed somebody, but it didn't. But yeah, that was the Oregan meat shower, a mystery nobody knows. I believe the organ Department of Transfer Patition was the ones that were responsible for the idea to blow it up. They owe Todd was the one who said, you know, I have a really good idea on how to get rid of that. Let's just blow it up. Actually, that's about the worst segue to our final theory. No, no, they kind of they kind of like they both start

at the beach. Yeah. Yeah, so let's let's move into our final theory, because really I've got two paragraphs that spanned two pages. The last theory is water spout with question mark at the end, water spout. There we go. Set it right this time. I'm gonna say, just channel your normal speaking. I know, I was like, wait, I'm trying to use my podcast, your voice. Let me just talk normal. No reporting at the time, reports at a kind of strange weather patterns at all, But let's ignore

that because it's eighteen seventy six. My favorite theories ever always start with like, here are the facts, but let's ignore all of them and talk about well, the problem is is that the reporting is so shoddy. I understand. I just like the basis of what you're saying. You're like the way I say that, don't ignore this, but let's ignore it anyway. Yeah, well that's that's because I have more better math. But let's just think about this. So there is the possibility that well, I mean, water

spouts are thing. Water spouts are little tornadoes that suck things up out of water bodies of water and then carry them and send them across great distances before depositing them back onto the earth in some unrelated location. Sometimes the water spout itself travels there, and sometimes it basically funnels it in a giant arc and then spits it out and it eventually all falls into one area. Yeah. I know. Well I checked in and actually this area of Kentucky is kind of on the bleeding edge of

Tornado Country. Yeah, it's like it's like way on the That's why I didn't I was. I really struggled with one because it's not in Tornado Alley and it's just such a it's it's in an area it's like like right, it's like I said, way on the edge of it doesn't get much activity, but a little bit more than we get here. A tornado touchdown in Oregon today, So

it does happen. Just because it's not like prime tornado area does not mean that's That's exactly the reason that I didn't just toss this out, because I mean, we had one today. These things happened. I got hailed on today for no particular reason, but it happened. Yeah, But you know, and that's the reason I kind of like the water spout slash tornado theory because I mean, it's just one event that can pick something up and deposited neatly somewhere else. It's a freaking tornado, yeah, I mean

really won't do that. Yeah, explosion will sense stuff like all directions, but in vomit vomit will do the same thing. It's it's not really unidirectional, but water spout maybe potentially could. So Okay, so let me let me run through this. Let me me read through what it got written here, which is that if some kind of water spout or mini twister were happened to come into the area and we'll suck up some kind of weird material that it

would then deposit on the crouches property. Well, if we look about ten to fifteen miles away, which by the way, this converts to sixteen four kilometers, there's the town of Farmers, uh, and that at the time was sort of industrial town and it had to it's the I know, I'm going to mispronounce this. Was that the Licking River, You know what I say, I'm mispronouncing it because it looks too easy. It looks like licking but it's probably Liking River, Yes,

but the Liking River. Linking River runs into Cave Run Lake, which is also in the area, and so I could see a situation. And by the way, there is no historical precedent or record of this kind of processing plant being there. I'm just saying, you know what, maybe it got lost in time, but there is We as humans have loved to use for centuries natural bodies of waters

as an avenue to carry our waste away. And so if there were an animal processing facility of some kind, whether it be for sheep or cows or pigs or whatever, and then they were taking these scrap its they didn't like, and they were just dumping it into the river, and

then it was flowing down to the lake. And who cares because it settles in the lake and whatever, and then a water spout happens and it sucks all that crap out that it was floating downstream and carries it that ten to twenty miles away, and then, luckily enough for the crouches, drops it on their property. Well lookye there, congret, you are now the proud owners of a bunch of discarded meat bits. Another reason not to taste the meat. I suppose it's been in the river. Oh my god.

Well again, you know, they had heart of your stomach than we do today at that time again, back in those days. I mean, I like the waterspout theory. I don't know about the industrial to try this theory because it's like they didn't throw away anything to do with the meat. I mean that got made into of their stuff. I mean any kind of meat, was hamburger, saucage, something, But you know what I mean. The the the apologize for the poor language here, but they used everything to

a degree, from chicken lips to ours wholes. But that is actually not true because there is a certain amount of material that gets scraped off and falls to the floor and get shoveled out. So they don't actually use everything. And if you've ever watched an animal get butchered, there's the whole. We use every bit of the animal. We

don't let anything. But that's not true because parts get hacked off and they get thrown away, and there's honks of meat on bone and unless you're throwing the bone into the pot and boiling like it's almost never as actually efficient as people want to say it is. So there is going to be scraps and bits and pieces that get thrown away. You never use one hundred percent. You may use nine, but that means that there's a whole. I mean, even haggets is made of that that extra

bit of animal. But that doesn't mean that the other bits are there. So we don't use it all true. That's my only that's my my my My response to that is that it's yeah, we don't actually use it all about. And actually, while we're talking about that, one of the parts we use the least are things like

the lungs. So if it were processing plant for you know, even like cows or something like that, that might be something that would be more readily discarded, that could have been picked up and you know who the heck, can tell the difference between cow longs and horse lungs really, especially when they're like and really when they're like three inch squares. Really, who can tell me? Lung material is

probably pretty recognizable. But I'm being very generic by saying lung material, but it's but it is one of the things. I mean, like, yeah, we'll use like the organs and the heart and the brain. Oftentimes people will use and like livers and even intestines a lot of times as case things, but like the lungs are one of those ones where it's like very rarely do you do You go somewhere and they say, oh, and tonight we have this delicacy of the lungs. The brain in the skull. Yeah, yeah,

oh I've had brain, I've probably or what brainy? Human brain? Okay, how was it? Yeah, pretty much like kind kind of gelatinous, you know, to clarify, I've never eaten human brain, but um, yeah, I mean lungs. I guess that would bring that full circle a little bit too, Is that like that would be one of the things that I would assume would actually be discarded more often than not. I don't know.

Maybe the only problem that the other problem I have with the theory said, if it sucked up a bunch of crap out of the river, well I probably would have sucked up a bunch of just like dead fish and old boots and all kinds of other stuff too. Yeah, I still have the waterspout theory. I think it makes the most sense. You know, or a tornado or some sort of tornado. Maybe it wasn't even didn't even suck it out of a river. Maybe it was a pile of discarded stuff. Yeah, it could have been next to

the processing planet. I mean, I could have even been at somebody's farm. I mean by going to the town of farmers and saying they had a problem assessing plant and that they were dumping it in the water. You're right. It could have been that they were just throwing it on the side of the plant and saying, who cares, the rats and the wolves will come and eat it. And then oh, well look at that, the sky ate it. Yeah.

I don't know. I just picturing some with some like farmer who's like making jerky and he's chopped the meat and then it goes to he goes to he goes to the bathroom when he cuts back and it's all, God, you know, what do you do? You know, you go beat your kid? Or do you like? Yeah? Really alright? What did I almost say? Yeah? There? Well, okay, listen Hannibal Elector one and due. Do you have any other theories has to where this uh, this material could have

appeared from. No. I think those are exhaustive theories, but I don't think any of them are good theories. No, which is why this is still a mystery, which is that they were that we managed to take this long to talk about this story because it seems like such a But that's what I said. Four is that you see it on the list first thing, and it's a paragraph and a half, and then when you start diving into it's like, wow, this thing really kind of loons out. And you know, like I said, if it had a

good theory, it'd be solved by now. No. I think the I think the it's mini tornadoes theory is probably the best theory. That nothing's proved. Of course, nothing will be of course, there's always another theory, which is it was just a freaking hoax. That is you know, that's the one that I left off because it's the least satisfying of the theories. Yeah, that's not really a theory. Well,

actually it is kind of a theory. I mean, it is possible that this entire thing was made up by a newspaperman at the time, because is not unheard of. Oh yeah, totally not unheard of. The or the crouches did it themselves, because the crouches, you know, pranked to everybody. I don't know, Yeah, well, I mean, and there's there's talk about people who came out to the farm the next day and they found the material stuck on the pick fans, as if the piece it had fallen from

the sky and skewered themselves on the fence. But it could have been that these were wet, sloppy, rotted pieces of material that were draped over bits of fencing. It could have been a complete and total farce. It could have been totally totally made up. It could have been like like one of their neighbors not too far away, just for fun, was like built himself like his own just put a bunch of these scraps in there and

just lobbed it over. Yeah, and entirely so catapult tribute something, you know, and maybe they're having a little dispute something like that, and all show them all get al and and marry. They're such jerks. All right, well this is this is the end of all of the theories that we have. So let's wrap this up. Put put a bow on this, put a little pad of butter on top,

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to us via email. That is the preferred method, and that email address is Thinking Sideways podcast at gmail dot com. That having been said, I've got nothing else, but I've got a pan in the oven at three fifty. So unless you guys have anything else, I think we should go like shout out aspects. We want to go vegan, man, I don't. I don't have any puns. I'm sorry you A little pat of butter and put a little skewer through it, um, a little bacon bits around it. What

if we put a little paper rika on it. We're gonna finish it with salt and sign off