Free Reign - Tooth & Claw

Story. Okay, so I remember Potter to my kids were all clutched in tight, hanging on every word. In the dark place, next to Harry and Hermione. And everywhere, all around, the mentor screech through the night, closing in, hungry to feed on our own despair. To leave us hollow, life gone, soul stolen, exhausted, spent, and hairy tries. Tries again to cast his spell, but again and again nothing. Than broken. He realizes we realized. That the Calvary is not coming.

Nobody is on their way. All Harry has is a memory of himself, and so he reaches. And he calls for the right. Peace. Charges from the darkness. He is a Patrona I take. Snap Judgement.

Have you ever been Drawing the sun. that you had no known connection to, nothing at all. And yes. This story occurs in real life in the real world. Listeners should note that we referenced both state brutality and sexual situation. Because in the end it all does make something. Pardis Madavi was a little girl, she kept on the Wrapped in strings. It was given to her by her grandmother, who lived in Iran, a country she never knew. These have left her on in her mother's womb.

The little horse from her grandmother was one of the only things she had from the country. drawn to the horse somehow, but didn't know why. She'd begin to figure it out on her very first trip to Iran when she was twenty one. It was the summer of 2000. I was in Iran. Um I had gone there initially to write stories about the Iranian women's movement.

So I show up in Iran again, fresh faced reporter, twenty one years old, and I become completely inspired by what they keep talking about, Engalobajensi in Persian. It meant sexual revolution. And I'm like, what is that? And I was completely inspired by the way in which young people were using their bodies to speak back to a regime that they didn't agree with.

She was living with her aunties and working as a reporter and researcher, interviewing women and young people about sexual freedom. She found the country and the people she was talking to every day completely inspiring. She felt she had found her homeland and her people. She was going to parties and going on dates. Despite the fact that it was Iran in the early two thousands. Which made parties and dates and things like sexual revolution a little complicated.

But it was all totally possible, because there was a lot you could get away with. girlfriends, we're in the car, the morale police pull us over and we're like, okay. We're wearing bright red lipstick. She's wearing One of us is wearing a hot pink headscarf and one of us is wearing a white headscarf, which at the time very much out of your And we were certain we were gonna get arrested and these two cute Police officers come up and instead of arresting us they ask us out on a date.

So it's it's not totally black and white. Morality police, officially known as guidance patrol, were everywhere, in charge of enforcing strict dress codes and social rules, and parties knew they didn't always let you off with a slap on the wrist. So I was nervous that they would find out the research I had been doing, that people would find my notes. She kept her research and her interviews in secret notebooks.

And also of course I was I was fearful for my own safety. I was worried that I would be arrested, I would be taken in, that, you know, any number of things were befalling so many scholars all around me. you know, I would have a professor that I'd be interviewing and working with one day and then I'd come back to Iran six months later only to find out that they were in Even prison, which is Iran's most notorious prison.

And you know, after a certain point of time, people started referencing Evine prison as Evine University, uh, which because there were so many p professors locked up, yeah.

So Pardeis was eager to find places that felt less watchful. She liked going outside of the city where she could be a bit more free, especially if it was for a date. There was one time when my date had taken me out to the outskirts of Tehran, um, into a sort of mountain sort of nature area where a lot of people would go on dates because you'd go by the river You're away from the watchful eyes of the morality police. So we'd packed a picnic and off we went.

And it was here on the edge of the river that her journey with horses began. No sooner had we, you know, parked and gotten out of the car and Suddenly I hear this like heart pounding sort of thunder of Hoofbeats and I'm like what is that? and they're just growing louder and louder and louder.

And I stand up and I turn right to left trying to find where the noise is coming from. And out of the out of the sort of woods clearing comes this group of women and they are just pounding forward on Most incredible. And I'm seeing these horses and these women and they're riding the horses and they're leaning forward, arms are around the neck of the horse, scarred. Yeah, yeah. But you know what? That's freedom. again this is Iran where, you know Horseback riding.

time straddling a horse was seen as morally questionable because the the regime was obsessed with women's bodies, with hymen's and hymen's being intact. And I just remember looking at these women and taking them in. And being like, there's no way that I am not gonna ride a horse. I went home that night and I couldn't sleep. I just kept thinking about these women. When I did fall asleep I was dreaming of horses. I j I couldn't get it out of my head, right?

So I got in touch with them. I went back there and I found the the the stables and the ranch where they were riding. And I begged them, I begged them to teach me to ride. And and they said, you know, do you know how to ride? Do you know you're coming from the United States? Do you do you know how to ride? And I was like, No, I just know that I have to ride.

During the weekdays she lived in Tehran, interviewing people on fashion choices as an act of dissent, and how they were pushing the boundaries of sexual tolerance. And on the weekend she'd drive out to the country and back to that stable again and again. Road. of olive trees that led all the way up to the stable. So when I parked my car, I parked my car under the olive tree. And there she approached her first horse. It was a Caspian. I was both

fascinated and fearful of them. So Uh it smells like a mixture of hair. um freshly watered dirt. Um horses have a distinct scent. But there was also the smell because it was Iran, people were making corn on the kebab, just right there outside in the open, or the smell of the water from the creek. The names of some of the women.

You rode with them with her. Well, I can't tell you their full names, but I guess I'm uh there's no way I'm gonna do that. But Rana, right? She was tall. You could tell she spent a lot of time in the sun with the horses. Another one, Khadija. She wore the braid kind of over her shoulder like this. And she had darker darker skin. Um and

I just remember she had really really strong hands. You could tell that she worked with her hands like all the time all day. Um and she was probably the one that that was most patient with me. The women at the stable taught Pardies to ride a horse around the arena, where it was safe, but Pardis wanted to ride free, out on the open trail and fast.

I was a very excited, you know, twenty one year old and I wanted to get there faster. I wanted to be pounding across the field at a full gallop, you know, wind and scarves blowing in the wind behind me. One of the things I hadn't learned at the time is of course when your horse is going too fast, your body's instinct is to clench, right? To squeeze your legs tighter, right?'Cause you're like, I gotta hold on. But that's the signal to go faster.

There was one time she thought she was ready to go out to the trail, even though the women told her she wasn't. But I was cantering around the arena and I uh had decided o it didn't matter what everybody else was saying. I had decided I was gonna go. I my horse and I were gonna go. We were gonna go.

My horse and I, we were gonna go out onto the trail. And so I cantered around to the gate where the which was close in the arena. I opened that gate, I rode right out of that gate, and then I started riding down the olive tree. the wind in my hair and I was like I'm flying, this is amazing, I'm careening through nature, it's all the things I've ever wanted. growing faster and faster and faster.

And I was I don't know if I was more terrified, or my horse was more terrified, or if we were playing off of each other's energy. But I'm like, oh my gosh, they could be morality police. And what that means is you're no longer locked in on your horse. And so when you're not locked in on your horse, you can't be present to them and they aren't gonna be present. And so before I knew it I was bucked round. Pardis was completely surrounded by most.

Welcome back to Snap Judgment, the Free Reign episode. When last we left, Pardis Madavi had just been bucked off a horse in the Iranian countryside when her horse was spooked by a bunch of motorcycles. Possibly the morality police. I should have been hurt much more badly than I was. I took a fall from a galloping horse onto pretty rocky ground. Panic. I might have called attention to all of us and put all the women suddenly at risk.

It was the Morality Police on motorcycles. She recognized the emblem on their uniform as she fell to the ground. But they drove away and seemed not to care. The women from the stable looked her over and gave her concerned smiles, and then Pardiis went back to riding in the arena. She rode at the stable for a whole year, and then another year, and many years passed as she continued her research in Iran.

I wasn't confident in my ability to communicate with horses at that time. I was getting there. It took a lot of years. I remember learning about how horses respond to the absence of pressure, not to pressure. Communicate with the horse. So there would be times when I was on the horse where I both felt Imposter syndrome, like I am not a good enough writer. I'm just pretending to be like fancy-free and all of the things. And yet I do also feel free. So I could sometimes feel both.

almost at the same time, certainly in the same ride. There was one horse at the ranch she was drawn to, a black horse named Thunder. Uh he was he was a very spirited horse, uh white striped down the front. Um very, very spirited. I just remember one time I came early, early morning and the sun was just rising so the colors, you know rays were sort of starting to settle on

on the on the on the ranch or the barn or and I just remember like he was they were running. The horses were running and I remember looking at him in particular. He just seemed I kind of felt his freedom. The trainers gave her a challenge. Get Thunder to follow your lead using nothing more than eye contact, arm movements, and the power of your connection.

So Parties led Thunder to the arena and So I stood in the circle, I looked at Thunder, I calmed myself as soon as I felt that he was locked in. in on me and that we were locked in on each other. I did what I'd watched these ladies do dozens of times and I extended my arm and of course the first time I did it nothing happened. He didn't move he just stared at me. And I realized it was because I lacked the confidence. So I took

another deep breath. It took probably three or four tries, but I finally did. And when I did, when I realized that I could just move by lo locking in on him and extending just one arm and that he then walked and then he trotted and then he had the most beautiful canter. He was going in a perfect circle and he would switch directions each time I switched arms. And it was breathtakingly beautiful to watch.

Pardeez could now take the horses out on the trail and ride free along the river whenever she wanted. She spent seven years researching, first the women's movement and then the youth movement. She moved through the seasons with the horses, cold mountain winters, long springs, Pardi spent seven years researching first the women's movement and then the youth movement. She came to be known in certain circles as the Sex Doctor for all of her research on the sexual revolution.

She was gaining so much trust that she was invited to underground parties. There was this one party I went to where they said, Okay, you're the sex doctor, come to a sex party And I'm like, Okay. And remember, this is a country where the stakes of having premarital sex, let alone group sex, right? Premarital sex. Or extramarital sex.

Is punishable by death, right? It's it's at the time a place where if you're walking in public with red lips, you could get your lips slashed with a razor. Right? If you are riding a bicycle, you could get arrested. I'm like, come on, is that real? I heard they had, you know, bribed the morality police. So I walk into the house, it's kinda quiet and Is there a party? Is there not a party?

I hear murmuring, but I don't see people. So I'm walking in, I'm walking in, I'm walking in, and finally I come to, you know, the large swimming pool and I hear voices from the pool, but the pool's been drained of water. And they've placed elaborate, beautiful carpets on the bottom of the swimming pool, and there was probably Two or three dozen naked. So that's a an example of a day in the life of a medical anthropologist in Iran.

The thing about a day in the life of anyone, but particularly a medical anthropologist in Iran, is that what's typical one day can turn catastrophic the next. Um this moment of your world in Iran being ripped away from you, which is like a pivotal part of your story in this interview. Um, I don't wanna press you on it bec but I feel like you haven't gone into that much detail about it. It's very hard to go into detail about it. I also don't Remember everything. And it hurts?

I was invited to give a lecture at uh at uh University of Tehran, Tehran University. I was presenting the findings of my research and I Uh the auditorium was stormed by the morality police, I was pulled off stage, and I was actually kicked out of Iran and stripped of my citizenship 33 days later. That final decree was made to me at the airport. When I was ushered onto the airplane.

And told never to return. I mean I was told never to return. Um and I was told that I was being put on a list, and I was told uh that, you know, if I ever came back, I would just be going straight. And it really impacted me and it really frightened me.

I felt like I had lost. My heart was absolutely shattered. Parties came back to America, and it felt distant and cold. She tried to accept the fact that she could never, ever again in her life go back to Iran or her horses. No more riding, no more horses in Iran. I said I was fine, everything's fine, folks. I'm good, I'm strong, I'm a warrior woman, and I'm just gonna keep pushing forward. I locked Iran away.

I all my field notebooks, all my pictures, all my clippings, all the scrapbooks I had just thrown in boxes and decided I was gonna forget about them. They were treasures. But I was just, you know, deposit maps or little coins or scarves. I I'd, you know, packed away lots of scarves from um my time in Iran, but also my time with the horses, things that smelled like the horses. Everything was in boxes.

And writing and rising up the ranks of academia, but there would be periods of time where I would fall into a deep depression where I wouldn't want to get out of bed. And I remember my brother becoming very worried about me. And it was my birthday coming up and my brother wanted to gift me something that would help me start to feel like myself again. I I honestly had lost all sense of self at this point. My brother gifted me a a birthday ride.

He had arranged for me to go on a ride um at these stables out on the coast in California, um where you could actually ride the horse out onto the beach. And I go out there and it's raining and it's stormy and so I get to the stables and uh the the woman who who runs the barn, she's like, It's not a great day to ride and I'm like, Oh, are you telling me I can't ride?

I decided I was going to ride that day and so I got out there and uh it was raining, it was storming, and she's like, here's some rubber boots and a big raincoat. You're gonna need all of the above. Um and uh good luck to ya. I'm not coming out there.

You know, I approach this horse of like, alright, we're gonna do this, I can still ride. So what that I can't ride in Iran. Whatever, it's gonna be fine. And I get on the horse and we start riding towards the beach and um the wind is getting f you know, stronger, the rain is pounding.

Harder, but the more the rain came, the more the wind picked up, the more the wind howled in my face, the more determined I was to ride right at the ocean. And so I did. I just kept going, kept going, kept going. The waves were huge. Waves were big, they were crashing. I couldn't tell if the wind was roaring louder or the waves or the rain pounding on top of my helmet. And before I knew it, My horse uh had thrown me. And I just sat there and and really took it all in.

I find myself on my tailbone in the midst of a storm. Um that was my last ride for about ten years.

And then she was called back to those boxes where she had thrown all of her memories. Her parents were moving out of the house she had lived in as a little girl, and they said come get your stuff. So on a not so special day, she went to open up the pack. So I go into the storage unit and I'm I'm faced with like a wall of boxes on Iran and I'm like, oh my goodness. Okay. Deep breath. She was picking through the boxes when she came across one notebook with a picture of a stallion.

I just thrown it into the box. It was a note telling me that the legacy of these horses I had fallen in love with these cattle. That it was my legacy. A letter from a woman she'd met in Iran, a woman who'd helped her learn to read. She'd tucked this letter into her note. But it seemed to be too that her family had a connection to those same Caspian horses. The words it said were

From there she immediately got on a FaceTime call with her aunties in Tehran. They're in their nineties at this point. So I get them on FaceTime. They're so they're so cute. You know, they w they they could barely figure out the technology, but they got it. And I'm like Hey these horses look familiar to you and they're like What?

And then I show them a picture, I show them this notebook, and I tell them about this woman that I'd met, and they're just like, Oh my goodness, do you not know who your grandmother was? And I'm like, What now? Turned out that my grandmother was an avid horsewoman and she would help women. Oftentimes at this is you know at the time in Iran many years ago. Uh There were young women in the community in the village who were needing to get away from abusive husbands.

She would actually help these women. Escape from their husband. Horseback. And they would ride all the way across. For many days they wouldn't have to be a little bit more. Yeah. Her grandmother literally put women on horseback and then hopped on her own horse and out of Iran and into places like Afghanistan on horseback. How long would that take? Yeah, weeks sometimes. You know, the horses were so much about protecting. of freedom on horses. That's that same freedom that I felt like.

Right? That that when I got on a horse. It was the same freedom that I saw the first time I saw women, right? she experienced that freedom and I think she wanted to pass that freedom on to others, right? And so she wanted to help women Felt unfree to be able to be free.

And I just thought, gosh, I can't ignore the Yeah. We're gonna have a good ride today, right? No, I have this notion that these horses are guardians of ancient traditions in many ways. And I somehow feel like the horses carry some of that. And so it's it's like it's like a little portal into that every time I ride. Thank you. In a tiny valley inside a ring of rocky mountains north of Scottsdale, the sun is setting, but it's still close to a hundred degrees.

She brushes a huge Throw the saddle up over the water. Yeah. The horse is towering and silhouetted by the sunset. Magically still. She gives him the smallest signal. Hardeez is helping to train Caspian horses, the same horses her grandmother rode in Iran. My grandma, if she were alive, would love it here. She would love the fact that I'm around horses and near mountains. When she's done with her training, she The fence and sits on the top rail in the Arizona.

is called Adonis. He's a huge black stallion with a white stripe down his nose. He's so himself and he represents that to me, like some a being that is in perfect alignment with themselves. He's just like so unapologetically him and he doesn't care. It's like I I'm like I'm mad with him. He is who he is, man. Bless you so pretty. What did you think? No, no, no, that's not for you. Adonis presses against her and chews her boot. So he's giving me scratches.

Adonis is too young and strong and powerful, so she's never ridden him. Not yet. Sometimes the best thing we can do To ride you, buddy. To Partiz Badavi for speaking with a snap, especially right. Ran and don't miss. is amazing. It's called Book of Queens. In Iran. on our website. That O-R-G. Yeah. A chicken. You would not believe. Stay tuned.

Welcome back to Snap Judgment. My name is Washington. Now this story does continue Imagery that made this good. स्क्राप्टाज में So this story is brought to us courtesy of Troy. He's a farmer. Pretty much all my life still right here in in That's Fruta, Colorado. It's a small town just outside of Grand Junction. And the business runs in the family. He farms, his father farmed, his grandfather farmed. But the family member he learned the most about farming from is Lloyd. Lloyd was my

mom's grandpa and I spent probably as much or more time with him when I was younger growing up than I did my own dad. And he was a hard man, let me put it that way. Henri At a mean streak. But he taught me how to shoot. Taught me how to skin, taught me how to trap. The other thing he taught me is he taught me how to drown the skunk and resuscitate. Wait, what does that even mean?

in the canal and drowned, I'm gonna show you how to bring him back to life. And he literally we caught a skunk in the trap. And drug it over there to the ditch, and he drowned it to death. And then showed me how to pump its chest and get it to cough and you know, get it back to life. Wha i why a skunk? Isn't that terribly dangerous? Like why not a uh I don't know, something some other small mammal that won't uh

I d I think that's just what we had to have in the trap that day when he thought of it. And a as a kid, are when when he's teaching you this stuff as a kid, are you like rolling your eyes or are you like freaking out? Um one thing you didn't roll your eyes around. Somebody like him, he'd whack you upside the head for rolling your eyes.

So that was Lloyd, mean, but caring, and practical to a fault. If you're a kid growing up on a farm, and you want to farm yourself, it would be hard to find a better mentor. But remember he wasn't even really Troy's grandfather. He was his great grandfather, an old guy. And he finally got the Ma moved him in with us. Fell asleep listening to him, and it was when we started. I actually found uh my grandmother's scrapbook. of Mike the Headless Chicken.

Now, if you don't know about Mike the Headless Chicken, don't worry. At this point, Troy didn't either. All he knew was that in this scrapbook there were pages of clippings, correspondence, family photos of his grandfather, Lloyd, with what appeared to be a chicken with no head. But in all his late night chats, Lloyd had never mentioned anything about a headless chicken. So Troy went and asked his mom, What's the deal?

She goes, Oh yeah, that's you know, something that happened right before I was born and grandpa really don't like talking about it much. But one of those nights when he was I got the story out of him. The story takes place right there in Fruda, in nineteen forty five. Back then, Lloyd was raising friars. Friars a a chicken that's raised for slop.

And the day that uh it was time to slaughter him, you know, he'd reach down in there and grab one by the legs, throw it on the stump, whack its head off with an axe, and flip it over on the ground, let it bleed out. And you know, he says, you know, you always had one, you cut the head off and they'd make it back to its feet. That's where the expression come from, you know, run around with a chicken with your head cut off is because th they would do that.

Troy says that a good run for a chicken with its head cut off is four maybe five minutes max. Then it dies. Got done a couple hours later, this one last chicken was still standing there without a head. And the chicken? It looked fine. It wasn't bleeding. For the past two hours it had just been walking around like normal. Headless. So he figured what the heck, let's see if it'll live till morning.

He put it in an old wooden apple box, set it on the back porch, and the next morning he got up and the thing was still alive. He was amazed that you know, that's been alive for almost a day now. This shouldn't be happening. So he hitched up the team of horses, loaded up, you know, all

chickens to take him into town. He took this one with him in the apple box and started betting guys a beer that he had a live chickens about a head. And of course, they expected it uh you know be It wasn't until day three that people started realizing how bizarre it really was. I'm just curious, like what yeah, what was it what was the chicken physically like to look at? It he looked normal. Grandpa said he acted normal.

Uh when he cut it off, uh basically I think he dang near missed and he cut it high. So when he cut the head off, he uh left the base of the brainstem and actually one eardrum. So it it still could hear, it would still get startled, you know, with a loud noise or sudden. It still tried walking around, it would still try to prune itself with the stump of its head. Oh no.

You know, it was a it was a rooster. Right. Um you know, a male chicken. So it would still Grandpa said it'd still try to crow and it'd make a gurgle and sound. How did how how did How did Lloyd feed it then? They fed it right down its gullet with, you know, your old fashioned glass eyedropper. And that would have been the chicken's life. Preening, gurgling, congesting, were it not for what happened next.

About two weeks later we had That's when it caught the attention of a gentleman in the business of promoting sideshows. His name was Pope Waite. And the sideshow promoter had a proposition for Lloyd. He told grandpa says, You know, we could travel around the country with this thing and you could make a little money off of it.

And you know that was right at the end of the Great Depression and Grandpa was So he took Hopewade up on his offer, and it was a good thing he did, because it turned out that Hopewade was He was a marketing genius. Because he didn't just throw this chicken into the sideshow circuit right away. It's more like he rolled him out. Phase one was to give this chicken some credentials, to make it more than just an urban legend. So he took it to a university, a biolab in Salt Lake.

And the scientists there surgically removed the heads of several chickens to try to duplicate the chickens' condition and never got any of them to live for any length of time. Now that the chicken was a bona fide scientific phenomenon, that allowed Wade to initiate phase two. The press. He got Life magazine to come and take pictures. Hope Wade says, Well, we need the head. Well, Lloyd never thought about keeping the head.

So the head that's in all the photographs was not his not his true head. It was donated by another chicken. And if you look at the Life magazine photos, you can see why Wade was onto something here. There's the body, and right there on the ground next to it. There's its head staring at you, looking almost kind of forlorn. Hope Wade's also the one that come up with the name. Miracle Mike the Headless Chicken. Did he have any name before that?

Mm. With phase three completed, Wade declared that Miracle Mike was ready for the big time. Or I guess the small time because It's a sideshow. They had him in a team. And they would have collars. is what they called'em. Standing out front. Grandpa said they'd usually take turns, either him or Hope Wade, to try to convince people to pay their two bits.

To come inside and actually see. His only problem was when uh people would come in, most of the time he'd just sit there in the straw like it was asleep. Cause in Mike's world it was always night. And they'd have to prod it and get it walking around and you know, try to make it active to prove that it wasn't dead. Some people were amazed, uh some people were horrified, but you know, part of what made Miracle Mike work was grandpa was there because he was the man that swung the axe.

The man and his chicken proved an irresistible combination. Mike was a hit. In Salt Lake. On the boardwalk in Long Beach. At some point there was a whole tour of the city. Mike was probably making several thousand dollars a week. A year passed. year and a half, and Mike's fame spread far and wide. There's letters that are only addressed to the owners of Mike the Headless Chicken two hundred miles west of Denver. And them letters found their way to my grandparents.

Some of'em were good. Most of the letters Grandma kept were uh We're hate mail. There's one letter that actually compares my grandparents to the Nazis for their cruelty of letting Mike live. You know, and I and I did ask Grandpa about that. I said, What do you think about that? And he goes He goes, Oh hell. He goes, You know that chicken had the best life of any chicken. He says it was nurtured

And his words were gotta see more of the country than any other chicken ever gotta see, even though it didn't have a head. Did did Floyd or Wade did either of them ever develop feelings for Mike? I'm sure they did. I mean, how could you not? It had to been taken care of like like you'd take care of a of an infant, a baby. You know, so y I'm sure you'd you'd develop feelings for it. Um Did Grump ever admit that to me? No. That w that was that wasn't the kind of man he was.

No. He was doing good. But one day Grandpa came back home from the sideshow and he didn't have Mike with him. So everyone asked him. And he'd always claimed that he'd sold it. Somewhere around two years afterwards. Local newspapers. He's still doing good and still traveling around the world, but he never did say how much he sold it for.

And everybody thought that my grandfather And it wasn't until one day sometime after A lady from the local newspaper called up and She asked him who he sold it to. And he says, I didn't sell it, it died. And I remember my mother was in the kitchen, peeking her head around real wild eyed and looking at me.

And I looked back at her because that was the first she'd ever heard of it. And, you know, that intrigued me. Well, what happened, Grandpa? And he finally broke down and he actually had got a tear in his eye and he says, Well, I let it I let it die, it's my fault. What happened is when they had it in Phoenix uh at a sideshow, they brought it back to the motel room with them.

And that night it started choking and they you know, woke him up and they went to get the bulb syringe to clear his throat and they had forgot it at the sideshow. And before they could find anything to clear its throat, it choked to death on him. And um what what did what did he do with with Mike's uh body? I would assume that it ended up flipped out in the desert.

Somewhere between here and Phoenix. And I think it he always felt that, you know, it was his fault. He's the one that left the bulb syringe at the sideshow. And he let the goose that was laying the golden egg die on him. And as for all the money Lloyd did manage to make before Mike died? Grandpa's exact words to me is that the government took most of it in taxes. Hope Wade took his cut and he made enough money that he modernized his farm and he bought him a brand new pickup.

Which I still own today. But that was pretty much it. After that, there was no money left. Lloyd went back to farming. By all accounts, he was never able to replicate his former success. But knowing Lloyd the way I knew him growing up, I'm sure that every time he swung an axe again, I'm sure that was in the back of his mind. What about you? Have you ever tried? Have I ever tried? No I have not. Has the thought crossed my mind yet? Just as a laugh.

No, I I think if I did one today and I actually lived. Or if I'd let it live. Troy is still working on his family-owned farm in Fruta, Colorado. And for more information about Mike and his legacy, visit our website snapjudgment.org. Original score for that piece was by Renzel Gore. The Digital Instrumentation by Andrew Vick. That piece was produced by Headless. Wow, if you missed even a moment. Tooth and Claw series exploring the blurry line between us and them is available right now.

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