Listener Mail: The Squirrel Is Not Enough

science actually has to say. I like how you were like, oh, a two parter, right, as if you don't remember, and as if you haven't been thinking about squirrels in those two episodes every day since then. It's It's true. In my own house, it's been quite a squirrel odyssey since those episodes came out, because, uh the first episode I had my family listened to, and I think I I mentioned how we were watching a lot of squirrel activity at our bird feeders, and uh so a few different

things occurred. So for starters, I was talking about about the scugs and was referring to the squirrels uh as an entire species as skugs. Yes, And in doing so I managed to get the words scug kind of like partially banned from my household. Well, me and my son were using it, and my wife she was like, I don't know this. This doesn't sound like a friendly term to use for squirrels, and and and you eventually convinced me.

I still think of them as scugs, but I I catch myself and uh, and find myself referring to them as squirrels more often. So that term comes from we started using it in the episode because of that letter, but from Benjamin Franklin, uh, describing the squirrel, his pet squirrel, Mungo. I think that got killed by a dog, and he

referred to squirrels in the letter as scugs. I think with if I'd stand the reasoning correctly, it seems to be that Franklin thought skug was like a common name applied to pet squirrels, the same way you might look at a bunch of dogs and say, look at all those rovers. Yeah. Yeah, so really we're we're It's like we've taken it upon ourselves, and our listeners have taken

upon themselves themselves. Too to rebrand squirrels as skugs and uh And I guess part of it too for me is like realizing, like, Okay, this first grader, do I really want to to have him grow up and be the sort of person who refers to squirrels as scugs and nobody around him knows what he's talking about. I think people will know because of us. Possibly. Yeah. I also have found that in response to those episodes, I've actually grown um more affectionate for the squirrels that feeded

our bird feeder. I've I've made sure to put out water for them a lot because the bird fountain we have, the birds don't really mess with it all that much, but the squirrels will delicately, uh like lower themselves down to it and drink water from it. And it's so delightful to watch because you know, normally squirrels are just scurrying about, fighting with each other, you know, looking up

for for predators, and they're just constant motion. But when they drink the water, there's something uh something precious about them. You appreciate them more because you know more about the violence and the predation and all that. Because it's because you can see the shadow. Now. Yeah, it's like when you when you see somebody's dark side. Uh, it's the anti hero effect in the movies, you know, where you suddenly by seeing the dark side, you actually care more

about them. I should also say that our bird feed are eventually attracted a rat and I got to see or I got to It's not not like it's a special treat. But I witnessed a scuffle between a squirrel and a rat. Who won, Oh the squirrel. The squirrel drove the rat away, And I think part of that just comes down to like squirrel nature versus rat nature. Like the rat is gonna obviously gonna be A'm not have to find it with me. I'll come back and

eat it during the night, and the squirrel. But the squirrel is more like, no, I'm eating this now, you will go away from me. So you didn't put them in a box and make them fight like that guy who wrote into Jama No, no, no no. I think we're still what what is cannon? Now? Are we saying cannon? Is that that didn't actually happen, and that was some fourteen year old making things up. I want to believe that, but who knows. Okay, Well, maybe we should get right

into some of your excellent, wonderful messages about squirrels. Robert, would you like to read us this email from Diane to start us off here? All right, let's do it. Well, first, let's call the robot over here. I forgot Carney. Carney just covered in squirrels. All right, here we go, Diane writes, Hi, Robert and Joe, I just finished listening to The Bloody Beasts Part one. You're a very interesting discussion about squirrels

that have been observed displaying carnivorous behavior. It brought to mind an incident I witnessed in the summer of two thousand four. I was on an archaeological excavation in the Orkney Islands and Archipelago between Scotland and Norway. At the moment, I can't recall which island my fellow archaeologist and I were on, but I think it was Papa Westry. As we were walking up a hill looking towards the sea, we saw a sheep nibbling on the flipper of a

dead seal. What they washed up on the shore a bit odd, I grant you, but animals that live in environments that offer minimal resources such as many of the islands that make up the Orkneys, will find ways to supplement whatever their diet is lacking. I'm certain the sheep will never adapt to actually heading out to sea to hunt for a seal meal, but they have no qualms about eating those unfortunate enough to have died of other causes.

I'm not sure what the meat eating squirrels are compensating for, but I look forward to hearing a part two. Thank you for consistently informative and entertaining shows, Dr Diane, And then she includes her last name, which we tend to edit out of the show, but I include that just because she's a doctor. It's worth noting. Yeah, I love the story about the opportunistic carnivory of of sheep, but

it doesn't make me wonder. Okay, so we believe that whales came from a former terrestrial tetrapod mammal that slowly over time adapted itself to a more and more aquatic lifestyle until until they just became fully water dwelling organisms. Could sheep do the same thing? And what would the cetacean equivalence of future sheep descendants be. What also makes me think back to our episode on on Cambrian life forms and getting into the idea of essentially the invention

of predation. The the and that I put invention in quotation marks here because obviously simple organisms are not consciously inventing anything, but a trend emerges where one organism is simply consuming another. Yeah, and this is a hypothesis about what caused what's known as the Cambrian explosion. And there are some people who I think dispute to what extent

it actually should be considered an explosion or not. But basically, during the Cambrian period, about five million years ago, we suddenly see this proliferation speciation events, many different animal body forms arising from previously out of you know, not much. So where does all of this sudden animal diversity come from?

One hypothesis is, well, it was the introduction of predation that suddenly set off these evolutionary arms races and drove animals to evolve defenses in the different kinds of defenses they evolved, or predation tactics they evolved, Uh, gave rise to all this diversity of life. Hey, and speaking of Cambrian life forms, our store has a new T shirt slash sticker slash wherever you want to put this image. Uh, it's our logo. Uh. You know that abstract symbol that

we have surrounded by Cambrian life forms in some agency. Robert, I love your dedication to plugging merch and that that is right. Remember that we've got merch. If you've got money and you want to spend it on some of our org go go merch up, go to our store. It's fun stuff. We wouldn't but we would not have it in the store if if we didn't think it was fun. Okay, here's another message we got. This one is from our listener, Victoria. Victoria rights, Hi, Robert and Joe.

One of my first jobs, about fifteen years ago, was as an animal care attendant at the Toronto Wildlife Center, a nonprofit organization that treats and rehabilitates sick and injured wildlife. I learned a healthy fear of squirrels while I was there. Whenever we were handling squirrels, we would wear thick leather gloves, often layered over chain mail gloves. I once got bit

through the gloves. Thankfully, they did their job pretty well, but I could still sometimes feel the bite years later, I wasn't there for this particular incident, and so my second hand memory of the story may be exaggerated, but I don't think so. But I remember a story of a time when a sparrow got loose in the room where the squirrels cages were. The staff member working in their grabbed a net to recapture the loose bird, but before they were able to catch the fugitive, it landed

on the outside of a squirrel cage. The squirrel inside managed to grab the sparrow through the cage bars and eat its face. Another interesting observation about unexpected carnivores from that job. At one point we noticed that all of the edmun staff at the organization were vegetarian or vegan, while all of the animal care staff were meat eaters.

The prevailing theory is that when you work closely with the animals, you realize that they'd eat you if they had a chance, so you don't feel bad about eating their brethren. Looking forward to your next episode, Victoria, well that's a wonderful story. I mean, it does also make me think back to some of the the differences between

wild squirrels and squirrels and captivity. So conceivably, and I'm kind of reading into I have no idea how long these squirrels had been in uh, in their cages, but if they had been deprived of any you know, natural ways to take in certain nutrients, they may have been essentially starved for them. So of wish you would talk into a bird face that is so metal it ate

the bird's face. Well, you know, we're attached to faces as as humans, but we have to kind of strip away our our our human complications here and realize the face is delicious. Yeah, yeah, all right, here's another one. This one comes to us from Nathan. Nathan writes and says, love the show, guys, keep up the great work. I'm a local pharmacist here in Atlanta and had to show you the squirrel video I took at my house in Grant Park. My favorite episodes are the Squirrel double part

and the two thousand one episode. Also really like the salamander interview. Since I'm a biology lover, uh, feel free to hit me up if you have any drug questions. Thanks Nate. And then Nate attaches a video that appears to be a squirrel going to town on a barbecue rib bone. Now one thing that's true. I think there was a blog for a while that was just like Bones of Atlanta that was like just images discarded bones

of discarded barbecue bones on the sidewalk. So I mean, there's good barbecue restaurants here, so people often will walk around with a clamshell full of barbecue and just throw the bones down. Well, let's see Grant Park. Which which barbecue restaurant would it have been? I don't know, but

uh no, I don't know the answer. But they're they're like, there's barbecue restaurants near you know, my walking the dog can sometimes be perilous because like there's just barbecue rib bones and chicken bones and stuff like that hanging out. And this appears to be a video of a squirrel that got its hands on a rib bone and it's

just gnawing like there's no tomorrow. This is This reminds me again of what we're talking about with squirrels eating the flesh of road kill and the artificial, uh nature of that situation. This is a very This is a similar situation like due to human civilization, we not only have dead animals killed in the road, we also have lots of roadside bones with flesh still hanging off the bone and some delicious you know, red sauce as well. Okay,

next message. This is actually one of a genre of messages that we got from listeners who wanted to correct something I said. So I said, uh, squirrels are now found pretty much everywhere except Antarctica. And some of our New Zealander listeners disagreed, they said. For example, Liam writes in saying I love your show so much and all the shows on the How Stuff Works Network, but I absolutely had to let you know that there are no squirrels here in little old New Zealand, and I myself

have never seen one. So jealous you see them every day. Keep up the great work, and thanks for giving me great podcast to fall asleep to every night. I hope you did not fall asleep during the squirrel Castration myth episode. Uh, because man, what kind of dreams would that produce? Oh? Now here's a question for everybody. If there are no squirrels in New Zealand, that also means there are no squirrels in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings and Hobbit movie.

Oh no, but I'm trying to think back. I recently reread The Hobbit with my son. I can't remember if Tolkien ever mentioned squirrels, Like there are a lot of scenes of you know, our characters traveling through woodland areas. I'm thinking surely he mentioned squirrels at some point or another. Surely he did. I'd love to hear from anyone out there who can who can answer that question for me? And if there are no, then what does that mean

for those movies? Don't we need to go back in like the next big wave of c g I that is applied to those films that've got to add some c g I squirrels to make it right. What is the Elfish word for squirrel? Scooky doo or something. Probably school Doc should take a break, Robert, let's do. Let's take a quick break, and we'll come back with more squirrel emails. That's all this episode is going to be. Alright, We're back, Okay. We got an amazing message, a couple

of messages from our listener Bevy uh Betty. Betty really brought it. So she writes, Hi, guys, I'm writing with some thoughts about your episode on squirrels. However, let me start off by saying I'm a huge fan of your show. I listened to an absolutely adore a whole bunch of pod casts in the house stuff Works family, but you guys are definitely one of my faves. All thank you. That's some high praise because the house stuff Works network

has so many wonderful shows. Well, thank you, Betty, Betty Rights. I volunteer at a wildlife shelter for about eight hours a week and right now in the Pacific Northwest at least, it is the height of baby season for Eastern gray

and Douglas squirrels. In fact, now that our baby possums are all grown up, our nursery is currently exclusively filled with baby squirrels and one chip month, most of the babies ended up with us because they were orphaned, though in some unfortunate cases they were brought in by well meaning folks who didn't realize the parents were likely just off gathering food. Yeah, this is a common Uh. This is a common thing that comes up with with wildlife

rescue groups. Is that a lot of times you people think they're doing the right thing by bringing the animal in, while in reality they should have perhaps just waited for the the the parent to to do its thing. Yeah, so I guess don't do that. Uh so. Picking up with Betty's message, I have some theory about why squirrels are sometimes mistakenly thought to be castrated, although the fact that their testicles only descenduring mating season is probably a

larger factor in the myth than what's contained in my hypotheses. However, the following may help outline some contributing factors that can help explain why some hunters claim to have observed fresh castration wounds on juvenile males. Basically, I have four ideas, which are as follows man four ideas about squirrel castration. This is rich number one, at least in juveniles. The

anuses of both sexes don't really look like anuses. Instead, they look like small red dots and are located directly beneath the genitals, right near where one might expect the testicles to be. Though it would be a strange mistake to make, I suppose it would be possible that the untrained eye could mistake the anus for a small scab resulting from a recent castration, especially if you were already

expecting to find such a wound. The fact that the alleged castration wounds have and described as being remarkably cleanly cut. Makes it even more likely that the surprisingly unanosy appearance of the anus could be misinterpreted as the remains of a juvenile's testicles. That sounds reasonable, I'd say, uh, point

number one already a home run. Number two. Why am I so intimately acquainted with the appearance of squirrel butts, you might ask, Well, when caring for baby squirrels, you have to be sure to regularly stimulate each baby's anus slash genitals in order to help them poop slash p We typically do this using a wet cotton ball to gently wipe the squirrels bellies, but in the wild the

mother uses her tongue to achieve the same result. In fact, it's even possible, although probably a bit of a stretch, that some misinterpreted castration wounds were the result of accidental biting on the mother's part. This makes sense as well.

This is a solid there. And both of these really drive home the fact that if you are watching any wild animal, or even a domestic animal, and you are just expecting very anthropomorphic or sort of beatrics Potter story book um behavior, you're going to be disappointed because these are animals, and they're going to behave as such. They're then they're not going to behave necessarily like you expect

them too. Well. Also like charging animal behaviors with associations to human taboos, because like the idea of a mother licking that their offsprings anus, that that's like so weird in the human context that you see an animal doing that and you think like there must be something sinister

going on. Yeah, yeah, indeed. Um, speaking of which, I'm definitely hoping that we get to do a Thanksgiving episode on poop eating and animals, because this is another example of something that is certainly a taboo and human circles, but there's some wonderful examples from the animal world in which it is regularly practiced and is a part of being a healthy young member of that species. We already smash the cuteness of squirrels into oblivion. We're about to

take bunnies from you as well. No, no, no, I take that back. Squirrels are still cute. They're still cute, even though they sometimes the flesh and brains and whatever. Alright, So back to Bevy's email number three point number three. In the episode, I believe that you expressed doubt at the theory that some of the misinterpreted wounds were the result of other baby squirrels trying to suckle on the

mail's mistaking their privates for mother's nipples. It's possible that I made that doubt up, though, no. I That was what one one author wrote into jama when they were

having the big late nineteenth century squirrel castration debate. One author wrote in with this as a hypothesis, and I was trying I couldn't quite tell if the person who wrote this was joking, because it sounded like it might be a joke, but he was saying, like, well, maybe it's other squirrels in the nest trying to get nutrition and mistaking well, you know, so here picking up with

Bebby's email. It's possible that I made this doubt up, though I was trying to clean up some particularly rank possum poop while I was listening to the episode, so I was understandably a bit distracted. However, I think that it's actually a valid theory to consider. Although I haven't observed it myself, I've heard from other volunteers at the shelter that it's relatively common for possum infants to try to suckle on each other if they have no mother present.

I've never heard or seen of this behavior in baby squirrels, but it's definitely a possibility. Well that's interesting, so maybe that that writer was not joking. Number four. My final note regarding squirrel castration is that, at least in juveniles, male and female squirrels look very similar. Interestingly to me at least, though maybe I'm just weird. This does not mean that a male's penis is hard to spot, but actually the reverse females instead look a bit like they

have penises. I'm not quite sure why that is, since it seems less likely that females would have volvas that protrude from the body than it would be for males to have penises that stayed close to the body. Well, it wouldn't be that crazy. I mean, I think we've talked about hyenas on this show before, and I have a similar situation, with female hyenas being the larger of the species and having some similar characteristics with their their

sex organs. Yeah uh so, she continues, I don't know if the sexes remain difficult to differentiate once they reach adulthood. Since adult squirrels are vicious little monsters whose butts I luckily don't have to deal with on a regular basis. But if they do, then in the very specific case of Hunter kills a male squirrel with descended testicles and then compares it side by side with a female, it might be conceivable to maybe think that the female was

a male without testicles. Combine this with the possibility of misinterpreting the appearance of the anus, and you've got yourself an urban legend in the making. I apologize for such a long email, but your episode was absolutely fascinating and completely sparked my interest. Keep up the good work, Bevy. Oh and then Betty also shared some photos from the shelter with us, and then another follow up from Bevy quote,

I have an update on my email. I asked some of my fellow volunteers about squirrels suckling on each other, and it turns out it's quite common. In fact, we had to split a group of siblings up yesterday for that very reason. Well, I don't think the suckling would create raised areas on the skin, it could definitely explain scabs and other injuries. On the genitals of juveniles. And

that concludes Bevy's massive dissertation on squirrel anuses and genitals. Uh, that's great, That's exactly the kind of field report we were looking for. This was an awesome listener, Male Bevy, Thank you so much. Now I just have to go back to our discussion of of barbecue bones for a second. And isn't it interesting that you know that that some humans might be thinking, Oh, I'm so creeped out because

squirrels are actually eating meat. We the species that have streets literally littered with the bones of the creatures that we consume, as as sometimes it's just mere snacks. You know, it seems a little absurd, doesn't it. Well, Yeah, so like I'm waiting to get on the bus and I throw my barbecue bones on the sidewalk, and that's normal, but if a squirrel comes and picks it up, that's weird. All right? I have one I want to read here from Tony. Tony says I was very pleasantly surprised to

see two recent episodes dealing slowly with squirrels. I've only listened to the first at the time I am writing this, but I had to immediately send up this email. My girlfriend and I recently moved into a new home to the horror music and discovered a fair amount of squirrels roaming the property. Thinking they were adorable, we begin feeding them, much to the chagrin of my family members, who told

us we'd regret it. We ignore there weren't in warnings and continued to put out a buffet of choices each day, corn seeds and unsalted in the shell peanuts. We bought it just for them. To make a long story short, the squirrels have become very demanding, and on some mornings there will be no fewer than six or seven on our deck begging for food. They'll run along the window

sill or sit on our lawn chairs. In some cases of particularly aggressive squirrel will scratch at the door or even jump onto the screen and climb around until we provide nourishment. In the first attacked attached picture, you will see a black squirrel on its hind legs begging, and in the second a squirrel is on the screen which you can't really see, making for a fascinating image. Thanks for the informative and entertaining shows. I'm off to listen to part two now, uh, and that was Tony from

a suburb of Chicago. We never heard from Tony again too, so I did not know if the squirrels eventually just burst into the house like Night of a Living Dead and just consumed everybody they got him. Now he mentioned this photo. This is a photo of a squirrel climbing on the outside of a screen door. But you can't see the screen in the photo, so it just looks like a squirrel hovering upside down in the hair with

its belly exposed. This is pretty good. Yeah, I like it. Uh. I feel sort of the same way with the squirrel feedings that we're going on at our house up because for a while I would when I would go to put out the meal worms, I think all they would have to hear is just the sound of the the aluminum container that we keep them keep the food in.

And then six or seven would come and they would and they would be like a scuffle, Like which squirrel we'd even watched, you know, mused to see, like which squirrel is kind of the alpha squirrel just able to fight off all the others. So is it gonna be the you know, the slightly red faced squirrel or the blondie squirrel. It's certainly not going to be the warble covered squirrel because we have gotten to see a couple

of those there. They we mentioned those in those episodes about how the bot flies will affect them and they'll have these warbles in which the larva are growing. Uh, yeah, we've we've seen a couple of those. It was also very interesting to observe them the week or two before

my family went on a trip to Costa Rica. Costa Rica being one of the parts of the world where you will encounter the human bot fly that we that we discussed in the episode, So you know, you couldn't help but think in the back of your mind, like like, oh, God, is this gonna happened to me? Am I going to come back from Costa Rica with with giant warbles in

my neck full of larval spawn. Fortunately didn't happen, Like that would have made a good episode though, Yeah, I figured it was like, well, it would probably be good for the show if I got a bottle fly. Uh you know, we could even bust out some video of it. But thankfully I didn't have to make that. That choice. Well, I'm a little sore at Nature for denying us hashtag content. Alright, this next message comes to us from our listener, Emily. She writes, good afternoon, guys, huge fan of the show.

I especially loved your squirrel episodes as I was listening to you discuss the possibly carnivorous squirrels hunting down and eating deer. And to be clear, we we didn't really believe that story. No, that was the one that came to us via the Russian media as right. But Emily writes, first of all, I believe it. I then remembered that last winter where I live in northern Wisconsin, it was quite a tough one for our wildlife friends. It was bitterly cold, we had several feet of snow, and the

winter was very long. It continue you to snow well into May. The deer population had had a particularly hard time around the time where vegetation should have been returning. The deer found only frozen dirt. They started starving off. The deer were desperate, and we observed some odd behaviors from them. The strangest was the deer appeared to become carnivorous. There were many reports of deer eating birds and squirrels, So if squirrels turned to hunting deer, the deer turned

to hunting squirrels. The forest is a rough place, and she shares some videos she found online. Again, I'm a huge fan. Keep up the good work. Well, thank you, Emily. Yeah, I've actually heard about deer eating meat before, and and not not predation and hunting, but like scavenging from carcasses. It's surprising how many animals we think of as purely herbivorous will dive into some meat if, if, if, nature drives them to it. Yeah, I mean, ultimately, it's all energy, right,

all right, here's another one. This one comes to us from Merle. Merle writes in and says Robert and Joe, I just finished loosten to both squirrel episodes and found them entertaining and informative. I trapped squirrels for a living. I know this sounds an odd job for the twenty one century. However, it is also a very important job. Ground squirrels, as implied by their name, it dig a long and deep burrows. This is a fine way to

avoid predators and is excellent out in the wilderness. The problem occurs when they burrow into our levies and dams, when our waterway structures become unstable, flooding and mass property damage occurs, as well as possible loss of life. While I don't hate squirrels, I recognize the need to manage their population. Just to note, I live trap. Anything that

isn't a ground squirrel is released. Love the show. Now, I love that bit of insight, and it just sort of the uh, the real world ramifications of of squirrel activity and that it is going to become necessary to to to check their populations in some instances. Yeah, I can certainly see how that would be a big problem

when they're when you're talking about levies and damns. Though, I just got a horrible parallel thought, which is, like, I bet there's some there's some squirrel control going on in like California golf courses, right, Oh yeah, but there's a whole lot of unnatural things going on with with California golf courses. I'm picturing Caddyshack, but it's a but it's a ground squirrel. Oh yeah, Caddyshack. Well, the Catty Shack gives it. Uh, you know, I'm not much nicer

we can relate to Caddy Shack. There's very little in the golfing world I can relate to, but I can relate to catty shack ground squirrels groove into yacht rock, chewing up golf courses on the West coast behind. Yes, I'm on the squirrel side all right. This one is from our listener, Trey Uh. Trey says, you're welcome to share any of this info. Keep doing a great job. I am from western North Carolina, near Tennessee. I grew up with very old school grandparents. The first story is

the skug hunt. We spent a lot of time hunting or cutting down trees. On several occasions, during droughts, we would witness migrations. The floor would appear to be alive with so many gray squirrels on the move. Papa said they would chase down prey as a pack. I never witnessed them killing anything, but Papal would never lie. The second story is about squirrels and castration. When it comes down to, dominant squirrels are amazing. I've witnessed on four

occasions fights happening in the trees. Everything was a target, but the goal was to knock the other squirrel off to be eaten by the dogs. I don't know if I'd put that much consciousness into it. Yeah, like you put the dogs there. Yeah, But anyway, some of them were smart enough to pick the terrain and would lure the other squirrels to their doom. Waiting below was the

faithful dog watching for the falling easy prey. I've witnessed it many locations because squirrels do a chattering noise before the attack. Also watch a few videos on skinning and cleaning squirrels. The testicles do rise into the abdomen. Yes, yes they do. Uh, Trey says. The squirrel inferret story is most likely BS. We certainly hope so a cape squirrel. Given the opportunity, We'll put somebody in the hospital from scratches. These deep lacerations often need stitches. I was shocked about

the Grand Canyon story about squirrels climbing on people. I was. I was shocked by this story as I was there to witness it a little. Luckily nobody was hurt. Now I'm a little curious about Papa's story about the floor of the forest being covered in squirrels. I mean it sounds like the ending to um like a Tennessee based a weird fiction story. From like the thirties. Right, Well, what's that movie is like Willard where the dad from

Back to the Future is controlling an army Crispin Glover. Yeah, yeah, I saw that one. I remember thinking he was creepy in it. So if Crispin Glover controls an army of rats to do as bidding witch actor controls an army of squirrels, oh, you would have like a it would be a squirrel lord. Maybe. I think Christopher Walkin could play that role. Maybe how about Tim Curry the skug Lord. Yeah, yeah, Tim Curry could have played the scug Lord at least a few decades back. Um, this reminds me In Dungeons

and Dragons, you have these creatures called cranium rats. They're yeah, they're pretty great because they're they're essentially just each one individually is just a rat, and they're the product of the elipids, the mind ful airs, and they you know, they'll go around and they're kind of spies for the elithids. One cranium rat not the big of a deal. But if you have two cranium rats, well they have the pooled mind of two creatures. Three cranium rats have the

pooled mind of three creatures. If you have a swarm of cranium rats, then you have they all have one collective mind, and then they take on all these additional psionic powers, so that they become quite a difficult creature to encounter if you encounter enough of them. I wonder if you could have a similar situation if the elithids were working on the surface, you could have cranium squirrels sending you know, big big rugs of squirrels sending I

kick fireballs that their enemies. You're gonna work this into your next campaign. If they ever get back to the surface, they're all stuck in the under dark, so it's just gonna be probably rats from here on out. It could be cranium ground squirrels burrow all the way down. Okay, that could work. Yeah, I'll go with that. Okay, maybe we need to take another quick break and when we come back we will finish up our exploration of listener

mail about squirrels. Thank you, thank you. All right, we're back. You know, we were just talking about dungeons and dragons. So it's kind of ironic that our next bit of listener mail comes to us from Lisa I believe or Lease l I s e. I guess that's Lease or Lisa at any rate, She says, quote, I just finished listening to part one of this and wanted to thank you. I'm trying to come up with some creepy color text for my next RPG run, Fate Core, if you're keeping track,

I don't know what. I'm not familiar with that one, but I mean, there are a lot of of RPG gaming systems out there, and scheming carnivorous squirrels are just the ticket. Looking forward to addering deer corpses and have had that have had their sinews not out around the landscape, and squirrels hunting snakes and hoarding bones will also work really well. Excellent. I'm glad anytime we can inspire an RPG campaign. I feel like we've we've done a good job.

The Monsters of Reality once again outstripped. The surprising and wonderful nature of the monster is in the Monster Manual. Indeed, though I guess the deer corpses, that's probably not. That's probably not reality? Is it probably not? Probably not? Okay, here's the fun when this comes from our listener, Erica. Erica writes Hello. First, I want to say I love your podcast so much and listen to it all the time at work. It's wonderful and I'm so happy you

guys are making it well. Thank you for listening, Erica. She writes, growing up, I watched Arthur on PBS all the time. Robert, you know the show, Ah, yeah, I know of it, Arthur the Ardvark. I think my son has watched it a little bit. Is he's the guy with glasses? Yeah, yeah, he has glasses sweaters. Yeah. And I think if I remember correctly, he may have been one that was one of the books about him was a Reading Rainbow book back in the day, and uh,

and then it eventually became its own series. I feel like the same thing happened with The Magic School Bus. Okay, I could be it could be wrong on Arthur, though, some of my fellow Reading Rainbow viewers will have to China on that well. Erica says, uh, I watched Arthur on PBS all the time growing up. And as soon as you mentioned in part one that you were looking for horror movies about squirrels, it came to mind, not

the movie yet, she just said. It's referring to Arthur. Yeah, one episode focuses on this movie called The Squirrels, also the title of the episode from season ten. Most of the characters watched it, and they were all afraid of squirrels for a while until they got over it and learned a valuable lesson about irrational fears. The next movie they all decided to watch is called The Birds. So in case you're interested in finding a recreation of the Squirrels or making your own, it would be a good

jumping off point. Have a great day. Oh you know, I actually we're we are recording this episode before Halloween, and I think I may just have to look up that episode to show my son, because you know, Halloween is this weird time where we're kind of encouraging all these uh, you know, terrifying ideas and all, and uh it is a good reminder, I think, at least for for young children, that you know, we're we're engaging, we're leaning into a lot of irrational fears this Halloween, and uh,

you know, we don't necessarily need to live in fear of the scugs. This this is kind of a tangent, but at what age do you generally think kids start learning to enjoy being scared, like telling the difference between like unpleasant fear and pleasant fear. I don't know, I mean just going boo happens pretty early. So I feel like they're they're they're versions of it that kick in reasonably young, because ultimately, like what's a what's a jump scare?

What are any of these things but false positives? Right? All right? This next one comes to us from Dan. Hello, gentlemen, was excited to see your episodes on squirrels pop up in my feed and I immediately knew I had to write you to share a personal squirrel experience that makes me shutter to this day. About fifteen years ago, I lived in an apartment which had an old but functional grill on the back deck. There's a squirrel that lived near the apartment, which I came to no one's site.

The squirrel seemed to enjoy being very disruptive around our apartment area. It would frequently go on our back deck and chew things up or knock over plants. Maintaining bird feeders was an impossibility. If we were grilling, I had to keep a watchful eye because the squirrel would sneak up and take food. I responded by frequently throwing acorns or small pebbles at it. The longer we lived there, the more I threw them with bad intent. One day I went out to use the grill, I turned the

valve on the propane tank. I momentarily thought I heard something a little unusual, but I didn't think much of it. This obviously was poor thinking on my part. I then turned on the grill burner and proceeded to try to light the grill with the grill lighter and then a gas lighter, to no avail. After probably close to two minutes of stubbornly trying to light the grill, I decided to investigate why it wasn't lighting. I turned off the grill burner and I honed in on the unusual sound

I had heard, which was still clearly there. With a lump in my throat, I looked underneath the grill, and what I saw shook me to my core. The grill gas line, which consisted of a tough synthetic rubber coated coating over a not insubstantial metal core, had probably nickel sized holes chewed through its side near where it connects to the burners. Gas was visibly and rapidly pouring out of the hole and spreading into an all around the enclosed area at the bottom of the grill. Several other

bite marks were also apparent on the line. I rushed to turn off the tank valve and then stood way back from the grill to let the gas dissipate, all the while shocked that I had not blown myself up. As I stood there, wide eyed, I looked into the backyard and I saw my nemesis perched on two legs, watching me intently. The scientific part of my mind tends to think that this must have been a coincidence, as the squirrel had a proven chewing history, and it frequently

was in our backyard anyway. However, I cannot help but consider that maybe the squirrel had grown tired of my continued harassment and had decided to get even. Thanks for reading. I love the show. Keep up the great work yours, sincerely, Dan. I was on the edge of my seat. Dan. Well, like I said, we received that email what several weeks back. So I hope Dans still okay and the squirrels, or

at least he's worked it out with the squirrel nation. Well, I think this was supposed to be fifteen years ago. But maybe you squirrels might have a long memory. Yeah, or the the there is the memory of the individual squirrel. But remember the cranium squirrels. They're they're going to hold the grudges. Okay, This next message is from our listener Amelia Amelia Rights, Hey, Joe and Robert, your podcast on squirrels was illuminating. Thanks to your efforts at day K

long mystery has been solved. Let me explain. As an undergrad, I took a lot of walks along the bluff outside my campus early my freshman year. On one of these walks, I saw something extraordinary, A fuzzy mammal, alarmingly flat and wide, scurrying across the quad. I was so surprised by this weird road and I thought I'd misidentified a rat or gray squirrel. Subsequent sightings, however, laid waste my doubts. There were dozens of them, typically clustered along the tree line

behind my dorm. A friend reported similar sightings, chalking it up to common squirrels that had been run over and inexplicably survived. I had my doubts about this conclusion and began searching in vain for online information on what I dubbed the pancake squirrel. When college ended, I moved to an apartment in the same area. I continued to see pancake squirrels hustling through parks and even around a nearby Corey.

Not until I listened to your podcast and grew curious about the California ground squirrel did I discover my answer. Following your first episode, I googled California ground squirrel and immediately recognized by beloved pancakes. I didn't know that the species lived in Portland, Oregon, but the local population seems to be thriving. Thanks again for helping solve a mystery and keep up the good work. Sincerely, Amelia, I'm glad we could dispel the notion of essentially zombie squirrels flat

zombie squirrels. Uh. You know, it is interesting, how just noting the differences in squirrel species. I recently rewatched the horror film It follows. Oh, it's a great one. Yeah, after the three years of trying to get my my wife to watch it, she finally gave in and and

loved it. But there's a scene where one of the characters is in a swimming pool in the backyard, and she's staring up at the trees and the sky, and there's a scene where a squirrel is making its way across a power line or something, or you know, a telephone line. And instantly what what occurs to me is like that is not like the squirrels we have here. Like, clearly this is a Michigan squirrel. It's um, it's it's

a slightly different species of some sort. I haven't checked to see exactly which species it is, but it's clearly not the same creature that we have here in the Georgian environment. You know, Robert, you have just made me think I have a mission now in life, and the mission is to make squirrels a spooky animal. You know,

they're inherently spooky animals. There's the bat, there's the spider, there's the wolf, the children of the night, the animals that are automatically associated with Halloween and spooky times and vampires and all that. We gotta make squirrels one of those animals. We've got to get them into the club. Yeah, if you can do it safely without endangering species, because that's unfortunately the other side of it, right, is animals that have long been considered spooky have often suffered for it.

Oh yeah, certainly. I don't want to encourage squirrel culling the way that would be like wolf culling. But I don't know, has it has it really harmed? Uh? Well, I was gonna say, has it harmed bats? It probably has. It's definitely harmed bats. Yeah. But if you if we established it as like squirrels are dark but somehow holy creatures, you know, uh, they should not be messed with, but they represent something you know, dark and foreboding, then I

think I could get on board with that. All right, We have one last listener mail for you here, and it's a pretty long one, so we're going to break this one up. Okay, Robert, do you want to go first to start reading? And uh when I when I can't go anymore, I'll tag out. This comes to us from Mako Dear Stuff to blow your mind. Hello. My

name is Macho. I'm nineteen years old, and about a year ago I started listening to your show as my first regular podcast and have been a frequent listener ever since. I've listened to episodes from throughout the show's history and love the work by all your shows various hosts. I have greatly appreciated all the wonderful information, conversation, and humor of the episodes, and I have just felt a real connection to the show since it's right up my alley.

My whole life, I have spent many hours of every day engaging with the world and learn about all the wonderful things in it through books, documentaries, walks, exploration, artistic outlets, conversation, and Wikipedia. I have always been fascinated with many scientific, natural, cultural, and historical topics and have always loved storytelling and fiction. I've filled my head with information about the many wonderful things in this world and universe and always thought to

learn more about them. That's why the show feels right at my alley. In the last couple of years, I haven't been able to read, walk, create, an explore as much as I used to or as much as I would like to, But listening to your show as I go about my daily routine has helped to fill in some of the gaps. For that, I am truly grateful. Anyways, today I wanted to share some experiences I have on

the subject of your recent episode Squirrels. My Family and I currently live in the San Joaquin part of Central Valley with our flock of several hundred free range chickens, and have so for four summers. This is our fourth. In our time here, we have experienced nothing short of terror at the hands of the squirrels. First, a little context. The squirrels around here are a our California ground squirrels.

They are not chiefly our boreal squirrels. They usually live in fairly open, dry areas and and dig deep, winding burrows in the ground that instant concentrations can deform the local area. In their regular environment, wetlands and oak woodland check the squirrel's ability to dig burrows and provide habitats

for squirrel predators. The problem is that of California's wetlands have been destroyed, and much of the valley's oak trees too, in their place has risen endless wide open farmland and semi urban areas that have proven prime squirrel habitat as well. Many squirrel predators rattlesnakes, hawks, coyotes have been accidentally or purposely driven out. The result is a place like ours. On the property we live on, there are thousands of squirrels and tens of thousands more along nearby canals and

in neighboring fields. This is obviously a problem for many reasons, but even more since they prey on our baby chickens. The from the smallest chicks to the ones of pushing adults. The squirrels have attacked countless chicks. Although they often attack them in the open, what they'll usually do is way behind vegetation fences or and in their burrows and pop

out at chicks. They'll grab them with their claws and bite them on their arms and legs, main nerves to disable them before dragging them back to their burrows, who are just violently dismembering them where they are. Either way, they essentially chew them to death. Think Pennywise, remember that opening scene from it. That's essentially what happens. Wow, So the chicks are peering in the storm storm, the sewer, the sewer grade and uh this saying like my boat. Okay,

I'll pick up from here. Mako continues, but the similarities don't in there. Remember the burrows, Well, they're all over the yard, hundreds of burrows that form a sewer like system across the property. It's like a dairy with five hundred pennywise is, that's hairy the town and in it d e r r y with five hundred pennywise is, and the death toll is about the same. Our chickens are free range, so being picked off by predators now and then is pretty much unavoidable, but the squirrels have

proven to be something else entirely. Keep in mind before I continue, that we only have a few hundred chickens at any given moment. Although it is often difficult to determine cause of death, especially with disappeared chicks, by carefully examining the clues of each disappearance and considering the likelihood of all possible causes, we have determined that the squirrels have most likely killed an excess of a hundred chickens

over four summers. That is more than all other predators combined, and that list has, at various points included opossums, coyotes, dogs, humans, cats, snakes, eagles, hawks, falcons, unidentified mammalian creatures, raccoons, ants, and more, including the unstoppable force of nature the ghost hawk. All of them are outsiders, though if a chicken is surrounded by two dozen coyotes, they're going to be up a tree faster than you

can shout yote. If a chicken is surrounded by two dozen squirrels, though, they won't realize something is wrong until it's too late. Why shouldn't they. These are the same animals that eat out of seed piles with them, and the squirrels have used this to their advantage. Robert, you you were talking about a study we looked at in the episode that that mentioned something about this, right, the

the insinuation predation. Yes, yeah, that that that definitely came up. Yes, where the squirrels just sort of gets you used to them because they're like, Oh, I'm just harmless, little squirrel. I'll hang out right next to you. Yeah, I forget that. The fact terminology a bit of something to the effect of cultivating prey tolerance or something to that effect. Okay, picking up in Mako's message, Um, squirrels have used that to their advantage. Groups have lost half their members. Big

rooster chicks have been killed defending their siblings. One time, three members of a group were killed in twenty four hours and a fourth was permanently disabled. Another time, a tree fell and chicks that went near the tree started disappearing moms have fended off multiple squirrels that corralled their baby simultaneously. An entire group of eleven was systematically hunted and killed, the only time this has ever happened in

our flocks history. So many chicks have been killed by the squirrels, it has stunted the population growth significantly, and they don't stop at the chicks. We've found countless songbirds, rabbits, small snakes, and most commonly California ground squirrels killed by the squirrels. Of course, we've taken many preventative measures with some success, and killed many hundreds of squirrels with little effect on their numbers. One of the problems is how

tenacious the squirrels are. There was one instance where a squirrel had a struggling chick bigger than its head in its mouth, and I saw it. I gave chase, yelling at it, but the squirrel did not drop the baby. When I've done the same with coyotes, they'll usually drop whatever chicken they're holding. The squirrel, however, just kept jumping over foot deep poles and tree roots and eventually diving under a fence, still carrying the baby. The tenacity isn't invincible, though.

When we put seed out for the chickens, they eat relatively slowly and don't stand a chance against the squirrels that can just shove a whole scoopful in their cheek in their cheek pouches. However, the squirrels and other birds can start foraging about an hour and a half earlier in the mornings than the squirrels can, so we can put food out early in the morning so our birds won't starve. One o their help we've gotten in the

battle against the squirrels is from a local Egret. When Egret has learned to wait in the fields when the grass is long and fork the squirrels as they exit their burrows. It will then fly off with the swarming road and presumably to slide it down its gullets somewhere. Well, that's probably the most positive note I can leave off on, so I'll cut this short, but I would like to weigh in on the king of the rats debate. I believe it was Joe who said that the squirrels could

be considered king since they have an altitude advantage. However, if you take a walk in the woods at night in places like here, guess what you'll hear chittering and skittering and squeaking in the tree canopies all around you. Rats the rats in the trees. Well, this is a lie full email. I like, really a nice summary of just nature unbalanced, you know, just talking about the in general,

how the the California wilds have been unbalanced. And then if you have, you know, some sort of domesticated farm activity with an outside species, what does that do to the surrounding predators? Yeah, well, a farm is an unnatural ecosystem, and when you try to do some kind of like farming that's not clearly surrounded by boundaries that keep it separate from the rest of the the surrounding ecosystem, which you ultimately cannot do. I mean, if nothing else, you're

gonna have to deal with potential pathogens and whatnot. So I mean that's just that's just part of the exercise. Yeah, but still a lovely tale. I enjoyed hearing all of it. A lovely tale of slaughter. Thus is the life of the squirrel? All right? So that you have it. Bunch of listener mails and some additional host comments about squirrels a k a. The scugs. Um, I hope you enjoyed it, and certainly if you have additional insights and field reports of squirrels, uh right in, we'd love to hear here

here from you. We probably won't do another devoted uh you know, dedicated squirrel listener mail episode, but we'll do more listener mails so we may touch touching on the subject again in the future. Yeah, this has been fascinating, especially to hear from people who have a lot of hands on experience with the world of the wild scugs. So thank you for getting in touch and as always, keep those messages coming. In the meantime, head on over

to Stuff to Blow your Mind. That's where you'll find all the episodes of the podcast, going back all the way to the very beginning. You'll find links out to our very social media accounts. You'll find that tab for our store where you can find that cool Cambrian logo we were talking about. And you know, at some point I would love to get a Scug shirt in there. I know we've had some some listener requests for some

Scug merchandise. Uh you know, I don't know, I'm thinking maybe you know, something looks like a slay er T shirt except it's scugs. I don't know that's good. Yes, if they do lend themselves well to that sort of interpretation, but but we'll see, we'll work on that, We'll work

on getting that in place. Huge things. As always to our wonderful audio producers Alex Williams and Tarry Harrison, if you would like to get in touch with us directly to let us know feedback about this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hi, let us know how you found out about the show where you listen from that kind of stuff, you can email us at blow the Mind at how stuff Works dot com, well more almost than Bausands of

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