Smells Like Humans
Top 5% global podcast! Smells Like Humans is a seasonal podcast dedicated to bringing a humorous perspective to quirky and curious aspects of human behavior. Each show, the SLH crew will focus on a different topic, and share personal stories and observations in a way that sounds like you’re hanging out with your funny friends. The stories and commentary are presented with humor and warmth, since let’s face it: we all smell like humans. (Contact us: contactSLH19581980@gmail.com)
Smells Like Humans
THE PIGS HAVE GONE WILD AND THEY ARE COMING FOR ALL OF US
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Super guest Ami joins Ross to discuss the fact that most humans have ambivalent feelings about nature...nature is good, unless it "crosses the line". Tangents include: Feral swine bomb; "CollieDongs"; rabid boxwoods; Funny Farm; moving to the country; foster dogs; rescue dogs; pork production facts; Winnie the Pooh; bull dozers.
Notes:
- https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/01/us/pigs-san-francisco-california.html
- https://www.sfgate.com/california-politics/article/new-california-feral-pig-law-hunting-16791397.php
- https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/feral-pigs-california-destroy-property-endanger-humans-time-stamp-them-ncna1288772
Contact us: contactSLH19581980@gmail.com
Not only will they hunt you down, but they, if you go up into a tree, which just as you said, show me up the tree, that's your best bet. But once you get up there, they'll die at the bottom, waiting for you to come down, evidently.
SPEAKER_00Right, right. Yeah, they can't climb. That's the good news.
SPEAKER_04Right.
SPEAKER_02Yep.
SPEAKER_00But they're eternally patient.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, assholes. I think they are.
SPEAKER_00Welcome to another episode of Smells Like Humans. This is the podcast where we explore the curious things that people do, the very human things that grab our attention, and cause us to wonder, what and why. I'm Ross, your host, and today, my guest is an utterly fabulous human, super elongated and always sparkly, Amy. Hello, Amy.
SPEAKER_03Hello, Ross. How nice to see you or hear you today.
SPEAKER_00If you can see me, it's awesome. Amy's 3,000 miles away. We're doing this remotely, but uh she's got superpowers. And welcome everyone. Friends, you know you can help us grow our little community, and the best way to do that is to share the show with anyone you can, any way you can. At the end, I'll suggest some other things, other ways you can help us, and we do appreciate it. But for now, let's get going. Amy, we know that a lot of humans love nature or say they do, right?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I've heard that.
SPEAKER_00You like nature, don't you?
SPEAKER_04I love nature, as a matter of fact.
SPEAKER_00People like the great outdoors, and when we go out in nature, what do we want to see?
SPEAKER_03Trees.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we want to see some trees and rocks, but what really gets us excited?
SPEAKER_03Oh, animals.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, wildlife. We love to see wildlife. We get excited about animals roaming around loose.
SPEAKER_04Absolutely.
SPEAKER_00Some people, I've never done this, maybe you have, but some people spend a ton of dough to go on safaris. You ever done that?
SPEAKER_03Well, I've been on a Disney safari, so no is the real answer.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's that's a no. Could you imagine, though, spending all that dough and going on a safari and not seeing one random animal hanging around? It would bug me.
SPEAKER_04That would be awful. That'd be terrible.
SPEAKER_00Like a hippo sitting around, like smoking or something. You'd be outraged. You'd be count you'd want, you'd demand your money back. I I would shake my fist in the air angrily. You would. You would. Um, I never went on a safari, but I did go to Yellowstone when I was a kid.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And uh, in fact, all the kids were in the station wagon. Mother was driving. What was dad doing? Well, this was the old days when the station wagons they had a tailgate that would open up flat.
SPEAKER_04Right.
SPEAKER_00So my dad was uh fancied himself a photographer, and um he wanted to get close-up pictures of the bears.
SPEAKER_03Well, sure.
SPEAKER_00So he got a sack of candy. Nice, and he hung out the tailgate with his camera, and he would tempt the bears with the candy, and they'd come running right up to his face, and then he would scream, Gun it! And my mother would slam on the gas and we'd take off.
SPEAKER_04Is this a true story?
SPEAKER_00Oh, yes, no, with my dad, you know it's true.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, do I do.
SPEAKER_00So, yeah, he he we did this all afternoon. Oh my god. Yeah, with the bears chasing, almost grabbing him, and then so we have all these close-up pictures that have bears like right into their eyeballs, you know.
SPEAKER_04Oh my god. You're lucky your dad is lucky that he wasn't eaten by a bear.
SPEAKER_00So many things, so many things should have happened to him. He lived 93 years. I don't know how.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_00I actually don't know how, because that was just one of those little adventures that we would go on. And you know what? It's hard to tell at the time, and even now, what was more interesting? The bears, close up and personal, or my dad risking his life to get a picture that, by the way, no one ever cared about. Do you still have those pictures? I do. I have the pictures. I have all of the pictures he ever took, uh he ever took. He took thousands and thousands of pictures like this.
SPEAKER_04Of bears or of other things as well?
SPEAKER_00All sorts of things, not always bears.
SPEAKER_04Okay, good.
SPEAKER_00But I will say, as much as we like wildlife, when it crosses the line, we have a different reaction.
SPEAKER_04What's the line?
SPEAKER_00Well, it seems to be subjective, but once wildlife crosses the line, instead of being overjoyed, we do everything we can to snuff the bastards out.
SPEAKER_04Okay.
SPEAKER_00So just as an example, California, out here on the West Coast, and a number of other states, are having a wild pig situation.
SPEAKER_04Hmm. I don't think one wants a wild pig situation, but please tell me what in exactly is a wild pig situation?
SPEAKER_00I love it always that you're willing to go on these journeys with me. If we were in a if we were climbing onto a zip line over a flaming volcano, you'd be like, okay, well, just tell me why we're doing this.
SPEAKER_04This is gonna be warm, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00But you'd be getting on um for decades. Feral swine armed with their knife-sharp tusks that protrude from snouty mouths, have torn up fields of corn, peanut, and cotton in wide swaths of Texas and the South, causing what the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates to be $2.5 billion in damage every year. Wild pigs are doing that.
SPEAKER_03Wow.
SPEAKER_00And this is the best part.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Now, federal officials are declaring a feral swine bomb. No, no out here in the West, California and other states in the West. Why is everything a bomb now, at least? Yeah, it seems like everything's a bomb now.
SPEAKER_04Not my favorite, not my favorite terminology.
SPEAKER_00Bomb cyclone.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Bomb old people. So fear that's not one. Fear That's the bomb.com. There is a bomb old people thing. There is a bomb old people at a coffee shop. I go to the city.
SPEAKER_04What does that mean?
SPEAKER_00Do you what?
SPEAKER_04What does that mean? Bomb old people.
SPEAKER_00Um uh I was just trying to go with the feral swine bomb and the bomb cyclone. Bomb old people on the in the weekend, this coffee shop I go to, it's perfectly quiet. It's fine. And then all of a sudden, 500 old people show up all at once.
SPEAKER_04I see. It's just like a large concentration of X. Swine, old people.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I was just trying to get with it. But anyway, there's a feral swine bomb. And these suckers get big, they can run into the hundreds of pounds. Don't forget, in Georgia, in 2004, Hogzilla, 800 pounds.
SPEAKER_04Who can forget Hogzilla?
SPEAKER_00Hogzilla, 800 pounds of hog, was shot and killed by a Georgia hunter.
SPEAKER_02Jeez Louise.
SPEAKER_00By the way, yeah, if you're on a nature walk and you're confronted by an angry wild pig, you should stand on top of a car if you have a car with you, or shimmy up a tree, which is I know something you can do.
SPEAKER_04Uh, no doubt. In fact, I'm wondering right now, as pertinent, and I had no idea just how pertinent the story would be, but I haven't told you my wild boar story.
SPEAKER_00No, I you've never told me this. I've never been privy to it.
SPEAKER_04I I can't believe it hasn't come up in normal conversation. Uh, so when I was a kid, uh, my dad, uh, who enjoyed camping and backpacking a good deal and wanted to share that joy with me. So he took us up into the mountains of North Carolina. We went on an overnight camping trip, the real kind of camping trip where you take everything in on your back and you pitch a tent and you sleep on the side of a rock, and then the next, you know, you you do it uh all over again the next day.
SPEAKER_05Right.
SPEAKER_04Well, uh, I was maybe 11, 12 years old, and uh much like I am now, I'm very always been very much, yeah, let's just kind of see what happens. Uh I was I was up for it. I was excited to hang out with my dad. So it wasn't until we got on the side of the mountain that my dad mentioned that there are wild boars uh out in the North Carolina Mountains. Uh and you think, you know, as an 11-year-old from South Carolina, my uh knowledge of pigs was, you know, kind of the cook cu cuddly kind with the curly tail and piglet. But yeah, uh Wilbur from Charlotte's Webb. That was kind of gonna hurt me. But my dad described this sort of thing that you are, which is this tusked, snarling, horrible, angry. They're angry.
SPEAKER_00They're pissed off.
SPEAKER_04They are pissed off for no known reason. And not only that, but they are extraordinarily hungry, apparently. So this animal we had to protect our food by, of course, like tying it up, tying a rope around a tree limb and hoisting it up into the air. Because if a pig catches wind of your food, not only will they hunt you down, but they, if you go up into a tree, which just as you said, show me up the tree, that's your best bet. But once you get up there, they'll die at the bottom, waiting for you to come down, evidently.
SPEAKER_00Right, right. Yeah, they can't climb. That's the good news.
SPEAKER_04Right.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00But they're eternally patient.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, assholes. That's what they are.
SPEAKER_00Well, you'll you'll be happy to know that places like the San Francisco Bay Area, which right now is being overwhelmed with wild pigs. Um, they're hiring hunters and other miscreants to go out and wipe out the pig, wild pig population, which is the example that I'm using to show you that there is a line that once nature crosses it, we're not so we don't find it so cute anymore. That there's animal. It's like they're okay in small numbers, in cute little numbers. So if you're from the city and you see a deer outside, you think it's cool. Okay.
SPEAKER_04Sure. Because then they're in my space, right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, they're what's nature doing over here? This is not where I want nature's interfering with my controlled nature. Anyway, so we where they're killing all these wild pigs, they trap them, they wipe them out, and everybody's just happy as hell. But you know what? What's that? One of the craziest statistics I have ever heard in my life. This was several years ago. I came across this, and I actually couldn't believe it. Um, about how many pigs we slaughter for food every day.
SPEAKER_04It's gonna make me sad. Just take a guess.
SPEAKER_00Every day, every day we're we're killing pigs, you know, and feeding the world. A lot of them, a lot of it's done here in this country, but uh it's done other places. But so just guess how many pigs a day are uh chopped up for uh hot dogs and stuff or chops.
SPEAKER_04Any kind of meat product, all all the pig products. Uh I'm gonna guess a high number because it sounds like it's a high number. So I'm gonna say 10,000 pigs a day.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Is that how many?
SPEAKER_00No, no, it's so much worse. No, so there it's estimated that they are slaughtering 3.5 million pigs every day. Every day, and that I did the math, it equals about 145,000 pigs per hour every day.
SPEAKER_04What?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, isn't that crazy?
SPEAKER_04Where are they all coming from? Where it like it seems like a million and then you just have to start all over again 10 years earlier.
SPEAKER_00Intense hog farm pig farming is intense. Oh, it's intense. But it's when I first came across these numbers, as I said, it was a few years ago. I couldn't believe it, just seemed it seemed like it was too high, like it couldn't be. But actually, yeah, you can look it up. So uh yeah, we're we have this ambivalence toward nature, and if nature gets in our way or we want to eat it, we always vote to kill the animal. That's kind of where we always go. It's the least creative solution, I think. Like I just recently read a story about a guy fooling around with a tiger or whatever. He's fooling around, the tiger eats him or eats his arm or something. What do they do? Do they kill the guy? No, they kill the tiger.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And I feel like the guy was what's he doing fooling around near the tiger?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, it's a tiger. Don't have a tiger for a pet, dummy.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. So, one of the ways that we try to strike a balance with nature. So we like the idea of nature, but we want everything controlled, right? We want to make sure our garden is controlled, our grass is controlled if you got any grass. I live in a building, I don't have anything. But then you then you people, even when they live in a building, they have plants, they're always trying to control something. And uh, but the way we try to control nature sometimes, I think we get pets, right? We get our pets.
SPEAKER_04Sure.
SPEAKER_00So we have animals around, but they're domesticated and they're under control, right?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, that makes sense.
SPEAKER_00Now you've had a dog or two, cats and stuff.
SPEAKER_04Oh, so many dogs and cats.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, how many you got right now?
SPEAKER_04One dog, two cats at the moment.
SPEAKER_00Okay, and the dog's name is uh Crinkles?
SPEAKER_04Crinkles McGee. No, his name is Miles.
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah, Miles. Yeah, wow. Miles. Every time I hear that, it just whoa surprises me. Okay, so we have Miles. What are the cats named?
SPEAKER_04Uh, two cats, Oliver and Sadie. Oliver's the old guy. He's got one crinkled up ear, which is maybe why you thought crinkles. Uh he's a fighter, he's an indoor-outdoor guy. And uh Sadie, Sadie is always inside because she's delicate.
SPEAKER_00And cats, you know, they can be a little wild. They can get you a little closer in nature because they're independent and they like killing stuff. Some dogs like killing stuff. But mainly it's, you know, you have animals, you can see them wandering around, but it's pretty docile for the most part. Oh, sure. Now, there was a time in my life when I was married.
SPEAKER_04I recall.
SPEAKER_00And um my then wife was uh famous for getting involved in interesting things.
SPEAKER_04Oh, excellent.
SPEAKER_00So she would get involved in an interesting thing and she would, you know, do that for a while until she got tired of doing it.
SPEAKER_04And then she didn't want to do that thing anymore.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and she'd move on to the next interesting thing.
SPEAKER_04Sure.
SPEAKER_00So one interesting thing she got involved with, which is really noble, which was rescuing pets, rescuing dogs. So she would uh foster dogs that have been abandoned and usually had experienced some emotional stress in their lives. So they were not exactly your perfect dog. They were dogs with personality, they had personality, and some of them had personality disorders, but they all had personality. So we went through this phase in our house where there would be one or more emotionally challenged dogs in our house. And there would be times when they would be running amuck through the house. I remember distinctly having this um very emotionally charged sheepdog, which was shaved completely. If you've never seen a completely shaved sheepdog, they don't look like what you think.
SPEAKER_04I I don't think I'd like the way they look.
SPEAKER_00They look weird. And this dog was a little bit agitated all the time, running all around uh in a life as if you know uh that it was suffering from OCD or something. And uh in the middle of some crazy moment in my house, suddenly the dog starts swigging down fish out of the fishbowl. No, oh yeah, this it was just the kind of thing. And then one time I'm doing like a little exercise bike, you know, just trying to have a little workout. Sure. Work work off some of that pie, whatever. All of a sudden, this little Akita mix comes running into the room and it's like looking at me weird, and it's making this little noise instead of a bark. I look and it swallowed a seashell. Oh, and it's crammed down his throat, and I'm like, what? Yeah, there was some decorative seashells like in a basket somewhere, and and it just decided I'm just gonna eat these seashells. So I'm like doing the heimlick on this dog and reaching down and pulling out shells.
SPEAKER_02Jeez.
SPEAKER_00You know, and then there was this little dog named Willie we had, and all these dogs, they would be in the house, sometimes multiple dogs, and sometimes it'd be like a real clown show going on. And sometimes it'd only be one or two, but they would be in there for you know a day, a few days, a week, a few weeks. There's this dog, Willie. It was like, I don't even know what it was, it was so little, but it decided that the bed belonged to my wife and him.
SPEAKER_04Uh, and not you so much.
SPEAKER_00Not me. So I you know, my wife would go to bed early, I would stay up later, I'd come to bed, tiptoe, you know, you tiptoe in. I don't want to disturb anybody. And Willie would just freak out and start barking and snarling at me, and it was just like, whoa. So, you know, that's kind of what we had. We just we had all these dogs running around uh for a while. And then we eventually got our own rescue dogs to keep. We had a dumpster dog that was found in a trash dumpster and a child biter dog.
SPEAKER_04Oh, wait, okay.
SPEAKER_00Let's so we had dumpster dog and child biter dog.
SPEAKER_04What is a child biter dog?
SPEAKER_00It's a dog that's perfectly normal in every way and beautiful in every way, except it bites children. It's not good, really. It's not a good thing for dog to be biting.
SPEAKER_04So like a liability, I would imagine.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and you know, because I had two kids in the house. Now, it this dog did not bite my kids, but any other kids that came over. Chomp.
SPEAKER_04Did it bite actually like was that oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00It ate like 16 kids. And then not to be confused with runaway dog, because then we we adopted this other dog for a while, but it kept running away. So we every time we'd bring it back and it would just take off like nope. So this is all leaning somewhere.
SPEAKER_04Okay.
SPEAKER_00Because I know you're wondering why I am talking about all these dogs.
SPEAKER_04I'm on the zip line. I'm just going over the volcano and I'm excited for whatever happens.
SPEAKER_00Well, this is gonna get relevant now because we move from where we were living because I got this idea. Like a lot of people get this idea, like a lot of city people, get this fantasy that life will be better if we live in the country. Sure. You ever hear of this? Did you ever watch the movie Funny Farm with Chevy Chase?
SPEAKER_04I cannot say that I did.
SPEAKER_00It's one of my guilty pleasures. It's not rated very highly, but I love watching it. And the plot is he's uh he's a city guy in New York, wants to be a writer, moves out to the country to have, you know, a simple life and be a writer and live in this bucolic setting and all the stuff. And of course everything goes wrong.
SPEAKER_04It goes wrong. Yeah, okay. I can imagine the movie. Yeah it's probably hilarious.
SPEAKER_00It I don't know. It's like I said, I I think it's one of those one of those movies that you watch and you try not to admit you watch it, but I've watched it several times. I like it. I like the whole thing.
SPEAKER_04Fair enough.
SPEAKER_00Um and there's a bunch of crazy characters that live in this little country place, and and uh the mayhem ensues. So uh so I did that. I basically and I'd already seen this movie before I actually went to the country. I already knew that I shouldn't do what I was about to do. But um I thought, what a cool thing. Let's move out to the country. So we do, and uh we move out into the middle uh of rural Virginia. So we we had this house and we had some acres around it. And uh my wife, so we s at that time we still had dumpster dog and we had uh biter dog. Okay. And she said, I'm gonna go get another dog. 'Cause you know good, because it seems like a trio would really pass. That's what would round it out. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Oh perfect.
SPEAKER_00Or something. So she s goes out to get a dog, but before she leaves, I say, please, please, can we get? I mean, it's been great. We've fostered all these dogs. We've we've uh rescued these two dogs we have now that no one would like, you know, because they are dangerous. Uh well, dumpster dog wasn't dangerous, but he he got into things. But anyway, but you know, can we just get a regular dog? Regular dog. Just get like a dog that's we start from scratch, we raise it from a puppy, we you know, it's a dog that'll do dog stuff.
SPEAKER_04Sounds great.
SPEAKER_00She says, okay. She's gonna go.
SPEAKER_04Oh, good. Yeah. Nice. What could possibly go wrong from here?
SPEAKER_00Well, she went out to this place, and it was sort of a puppy farm situation, so not ideal.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And she looked at the available puppies, and the one that caught her eye was sitting in the corner looking weak and petrified. Not the ones that are jumping around acting like dogs. It was the one that looked like it was sad. And that's the one she got.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And she brought it home, and I quickly noticed that the dog was afraid of everything.
SPEAKER_01Oh no.
SPEAKER_00It was afraid of the grass. It was afraid of its own feet.
SPEAKER_05Really?
SPEAKER_00So we I think this is my idea to name the dog Scout. But the only thing it ever scouted was a hiding place. This dog was not. This dog was extremely timid. And for the dog's entire life, it would just worry. What it would do is pace around all day and all night. You'd hear it just walking around, checking everybody, checking, gotta check the children. Oh my god. Very, very nervous dog. Okay. So that's our that's our dog.
SPEAKER_05Okay.
SPEAKER_00Nervous scout. Got any questions so far?
SPEAKER_04No.
SPEAKER_00Are you with me?
SPEAKER_04I'm a little worried about what happens next, but I'm here for the ride.
SPEAKER_00So we moved to the country. We buy this place, as I say. It's got a few acres. But we next door, there is a hundred acres of wooded forest. It's sweet. Oh, it's sweet. It's so beautiful. We don't own it, but uh, we figure, hey, it's like we own it. We're right next door.
SPEAKER_04Plus, it's a buffer.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's a buffer, but also maybe whoever owns it will let us like take walks in there and stuff and see nature and hang out and walk.
SPEAKER_04Sure. Maybe get some pigs.
SPEAKER_00Build a tree house. Who knows? You know, it's like Winnie the Pooh, the hundred-acre wood.
SPEAKER_04I love it.
SPEAKER_00With Eeyore.
SPEAKER_04Very excited.
SPEAKER_00Piglet.
SPEAKER_04Kanga and Roo.
SPEAKER_00Kanga and Rue. Christopher Robin, who nobody likes.
SPEAKER_04Nobody likes Christopher Robin?
SPEAKER_00I don't I don't like him. I like big eyes. I like I like the animal. I don't know. He's just spoiled.
SPEAKER_04Okay. I don't like things.
SPEAKER_00Why doesn't he have a job?
SPEAKER_04A job or a jacket?
SPEAKER_00A job. And a jacket.
SPEAKER_04I I feel like he's a child. He's a child, is why he doesn't have a job.
SPEAKER_00Okay. Well, you maybe.
SPEAKER_04His job is creating stories. Okay, we'll we'll deal with that later.
SPEAKER_00So, beautiful hundred-acre wood, Winnie the Pooh. We live right next door.
SPEAKER_05Love it.
SPEAKER_00It's sweet setup.
SPEAKER_05Love it.
SPEAKER_00About three hours after we move in, we hear a machine starting up. It's a bulldozer. The guy who owns the woods had just purchased these woods from somebody else and decided what had to happen is every single tree had to be bulldozed. No. Yeah. Every single tree. So um he got on his bulldozer every day, and he he was uh incensed. He's trees were making him mad, and he was gonna knock down every tree because in his mind the trees are in the wave of making his gentleman farm.
SPEAKER_04Um was he gonna grow or pasture things? Is that why? Or are you just gonna have trees?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, after he would plop down a few cows around the stumps after he chopped down the trees. Yeah. He had cows and he had a donkey, and yeah, you know, the he he I mean he was a hobby farmer. It wasn't like he had an active going concern as a farmer. He was more like, hey, I made some money and uh I'm gonna buy this land, I'm gonna put a McMansion on it, and I'm gonna knock down all the trees, and I'll have like a little cow farm.
SPEAKER_04Okay. I'm not loving it. It's it doesn't seem it doesn't I liked Christopher Robin situation more than this.
SPEAKER_00Yes, I yes. And this guy was kind of an older guy, and he was had this look. He was kind of like hard scrabble angry, had a big head. Big head on a little body.
SPEAKER_04That'll make you mad. It'll make you mad if you have a big head on a little body.
SPEAKER_00And he had a bad case of the bark lust.
SPEAKER_04I'm sorry, what?
SPEAKER_00The bark lust.
SPEAKER_04What is that?
SPEAKER_00He wanted to kill the trees so bad. He loved he loved bulldozing the trees. Yeah, bark lust. I made it up. I don't know if it's really a thing.
SPEAKER_04I I was thinking of a dog bark, and then he wanted to be. He wanted dogs to bark, which I wasn't able to figure out right away, but now I'm back with you. He he wanted to cut down the trees.
SPEAKER_00Right. So that that again, going back to the theme of the show, was like, yeah, nature's cool until it crosses the line. And for him, those trees had crossed the line. They were in his way.
SPEAKER_04Be gone, be gone, trees. I shall cut you down.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. But he did it so roughly with the bulldozer, like smashing a tree with a bulldozer, that's a horrible way for a tree to go.
SPEAKER_02Doesn't sound good.
SPEAKER_00And then what he would do is he would uh bulldoze them all into a pile, and then at night he would light the piles on fire.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_00You could smell it, and of course, you could hear the silent scream of the trees.
SPEAKER_04Oh, Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00So he would do this every day, and every day I would think, well, he's certainly not gonna cut down anymore. He's already cleared plenty. It's a hundred acres. My God, he doesn't need to clear off every tree, but that's exactly what he did.
SPEAKER_04On the whole hundred acres?
SPEAKER_00He knocked down all of Winnie the Pooh's trees.
SPEAKER_04Damn, bastard.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_04That's cold. That's cold, man.
SPEAKER_00It was cold, and it was so disappointing to watch this happen. But what could you do? You know, it was his subjugation of nature. So he gets to the last few trees, and then you could tell there was trees right on the property line between our properties.
SPEAKER_02Uh-oh.
SPEAKER_00And you could tell he was thinking about that he wanted a piece of those too. And he couldn't figure out how to do it.
SPEAKER_04He's like the guy, the bad guys in the Lorax.
SPEAKER_00What?
SPEAKER_04The Lorax, the Dr. Seuss about the uh I'm the Lorax. I speak for the trees.
SPEAKER_00Oh yeah?
SPEAKER_04Remember that? That they cut down all the trees. They they wow.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_04That's in a kid's book? Yeah. Oh, it's very adult. Yeah.
unknownWow.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, they destroy everything.
SPEAKER_00Maybe, oh yeah, maybe that's what inspired him because that's how he was behaving.
SPEAKER_04Sounds like it.
SPEAKER_00So I knew he wanted to cut down the boundary trees, but I also knew that he knew that he wasn't supposed to. So he came up came up with a plan B. His plan B was to push his last trees that he'd cut down right up to the boundary and light them on fire. And then at night, and then he knew that they would burn my trees. The trees on the line that were mine.
SPEAKER_04Son of a bitch. This guy is real cold.
SPEAKER_00So I get up and see what he did and knew exactly, you know, because he wasn't an idiot. He was just aggressively wanting to kill every tree. All the trees. When I see what he did, I figure I gotta call this guy. Because this is messed up. Now I'm from the city. This guy was from the country, and he was Appalachian, man, for the real.
SPEAKER_04Okay.
SPEAKER_00So just a different, two different kinds of people. You know, me from born in New York, being mostly a city person, him, you know, from the holler. I don't know where we came from.
SPEAKER_04From the place where trees get bulldozed.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. So uh I give him a call, introduce myself. I say, hello, my name is Ross, and we are your neighbor to the north. How are you today? Now, you probably are familiar with a mountain kind of country accent.
SPEAKER_04I gotcha.
SPEAKER_00It's kind of a twang.
SPEAKER_04There's yep.
SPEAKER_00And sometimes it could be hard to understand.
SPEAKER_04For sure.
SPEAKER_00Um, and also he I don't know if he was hard of hearing, but he was talking pretty loud. So I said, hey, my name is Raj. He's like, what nah?
SPEAKER_04Well, sitting on a bulldozer all day, you gotta it it it messes with your hearing. So that that tracks.
SPEAKER_00So I tell him, you know, I want to talk to him about something.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, what do you want to talk about, Zally? That's pretty good. You're getting there.
SPEAKER_00Oh, so I said, Well, you know, I was out on a stroll this morning and I noticed that you burned my trees down.
SPEAKER_04The trees are on fire and they weren't like that when I went to bed last night.
SPEAKER_00The best part about it was he goes, Yeah, well, it's trash trees anyway.
SPEAKER_01Trash trees. Trash trees.
SPEAKER_00I said, Well, perhaps, you know, not being an expert on trees, but they were my trees, and I plan to keep them.
SPEAKER_04Yes. I've got a dumpster dog, too, and I'm not doing anything with that guy.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, exactly. He says, Maybe so, but it was an accident. It could have happened to anyone. Not true, sir. At that point, I just reacted instinctively and said, Well, yeah, anyone who is behaving irresponsibly.
SPEAKER_04Ooh, take that hill, Billy.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, he didn't, he didn't like that. And as I was saying the words, I kind of th figured this isn't gonna go well. Not that it had been going well up to that point.
SPEAKER_04You, sir, had crossed the line.
SPEAKER_00This, yes, just like nature. I now had crossed the line, like the trees had crossed the line, and he wanted to bulldoze me. And I found out that for uh this is something I did not know being a city person. But in the country, uh, it goes from zero to sixty pretty quick when it involves property and stuff real fast. People jump into and he starts screaming.
SPEAKER_01There it is. God damn it, I was a goddamn accent. I told you, who the hell are you trying to tell me what I can do with my own property?
SPEAKER_00And I'm like, you can do whatever you want, but you can't burn down my trees, or I'll do what I want. And then quickly he starts asking me.
SPEAKER_01He starts saying, Hey, hey, hey, you got a collie dong?
SPEAKER_00And I have no idea what he just said.
SPEAKER_04Oh, collie dog.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, but it's uh he's saying collie dong, like d-o-n-g.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, no, I translate.
SPEAKER_00That's what I sound like, that's what it sounds like to me. And I'm like, what?
SPEAKER_01A collie dong, collie dong! You got a collie dog?
SPEAKER_00And I'm like, are you saying collie dog?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, collie dong, you got one?
SPEAKER_00And I'm like, well, yeah, we have one.
SPEAKER_01He goes, That collie dog ate my chickens. Oh, hell no.
SPEAKER_00And I'm like, I don't think so. That junk is afraid of everything.
SPEAKER_04It would be terrified of a chicken.
SPEAKER_00And even when they're normal, which my collie dong wasn't, but my collie dong, a normal collie dong isn't going to, it's a herding animal. They take care of other animals. They don't eat, they don't eat them, but he's screaming, he's going nuts.
SPEAKER_01Your collie dong ate my chickens, goddammit. And if I ever see it on my property again, I'll shoot it. Oh hell.
SPEAKER_00And I already knew he had guns of plenty because he was always shooting them. And I said, Well, I really hope you're not serious.
SPEAKER_01And he goes, You just watch me.
SPEAKER_00So um, at that moment I remembered that his dog's always over at our place, and his dog is like knocking our trash cans over and eating the trash, right?
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So I said, What about your dog? He's always over here, you know, eating our trash.
SPEAKER_01And he goes, shoot him. Oh.
SPEAKER_00He goes, but right after you go, he goes, shoot him, but he better be doing something. So we hang up. This did not go well, Amy. No, this is not a good one.
SPEAKER_04This is not it.
SPEAKER_00Wasn't the meat cute that I was hoping for.
SPEAKER_04No, that was not the outcome you wanted.
SPEAKER_00No, I was I'd been there like a week and we were already at war. And this guy, uh, I had no idea what his next move was gonna be. He'd already burned down my trees, so who knows?
SPEAKER_04It sounds like he was gonna shoot something, so yeah.
SPEAKER_00So I figured so I sleep on it. That's like a Saturday.
SPEAKER_04Okay.
SPEAKER_00So overnight, I I figure I better go over and talk to this guy.
SPEAKER_04You're gonna go to his house, Ross?
SPEAKER_00I think it's the only option.
SPEAKER_04This feels very dangerous.
SPEAKER_00Well, again, keeping in mind, I don't know anything about country life. So I'm thinking, like city people, like you think, well, let's just have a conversation. We can work this out. So I tell I call him again the next morning and I say something like, you know, I think we got off the wrong foot, so I'd like to come over and we can chat. And uh and he said, Okay, it was like 10 in the morning or something. He says, Yeah, you can come over. So I said, Okay, I'm gonna come over now. I just want you to know.
SPEAKER_04So don't shoot me. I actually that's for real. Yeah, no, that's this is I definitely thought he might.
SPEAKER_00The dude had an elephant gun that he would shoot somewhere at something, and it was so loud. Yeah, it was so loud.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So I go over, and like I said, they had built a brand new McMansion, which was completely inconsistent with the rest of the scene they had going on there with the tree knocking and the cows and the donkey. It was like, what are you going for here? You know, pick a lane.
SPEAKER_02Yes.
SPEAKER_00So he had his brand new McMansion, exactly what you think of when you think of a McMansion. So I go over there, knock on the door, he invites me in. He's got a wife. Okay. She did not look, she looked normal.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, that'll happen.
SPEAKER_00Uh she was kind of quiet.
SPEAKER_04I was thinking a prisoner. Did you I was did you make sure that she was there of her own pre-volition?
SPEAKER_00She did have those help me eyes.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, she was there under duress.
SPEAKER_00But you know, she was pretty quiet. A little Stockholm syndrome, maybe, but he was the very cordial in the sense that he was very excited about showing me his brand new house.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, you were in his house now. Welcome to my place.
SPEAKER_00Uh yeah, he was very proud of it. He showed me all of the rooms. There were a lot of animal heads kind of hidden. I was just gonna ask.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, were there deer and whatnot? Yeah, except for deer heads.
SPEAKER_00It was arranged randomly. They were just like they didn't seem to be following a pattern that I could recognize.
SPEAKER_04Nah. That's for city folk.
SPEAKER_00He even showed me his closets.
SPEAKER_04Sure. And uh what's inside the closets.
SPEAKER_00Well, it was mainly uh polo shirts, which is another thing that threw me, but they were all basically the same. Anyway, it was like, yeah, here's some of the trees I murdered, and I turned them into a closet. So yeah, it smelled like cedar. It was nice, but it's like, man, that was a cool Winnie the Pooh tree, just like Eeyora was swinging on that tree a couple weeks ago.
SPEAKER_04And now it's not now, it's in my closet holding in my polo shirts.
SPEAKER_00Eventually we make our way down to his huge bar room. He's got a whole giant bar.
SPEAKER_04Okay.
SPEAKER_00It's really nice. So he tells his wife to make us, it's 10 30 in the morning now.
SPEAKER_04Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_00Make us a daiquiri.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, make a daiquiri. Woman.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it really was like that. Like, go make us some daiquiries. And he looked at me like, you drink daiquiri, don't you? And I'm like, uh damn it is Sunday morning, 10 30, uh drink with an umbrella. Sure, that yeah. I'm normally down for that.
SPEAKER_04Oh, I love it.
SPEAKER_00So we uh sat down face to face, drinking Dak Dacrice.
SPEAKER_04Like you do. Like real men.
SPEAKER_00We we were in this, you know, tiny corner of the world, two people that couldn't have come from different walks of life, but we had a decent conversation. We both of us knew we would never actually be friends.
SPEAKER_03Sure.
SPEAKER_00But we were in some way, I think, both trying to not be enemies.
SPEAKER_05Okay.
SPEAKER_00And I realized, you know, as I was looking at his giant head that there really wasn't that much difference between us, uh, unless you consider everything. But yeah, um, but we did we did um did chat and we did um come to an agreement that he would pay for the trees that he damaged. Okay. As long as we could come to a reasonable understanding of what those trees might be worth. Which, of course, we never did. Ten million dollars. Yeah. He never did. Yeah, no, he never paid me anything because he wanted to litigate the value of the trees. Oh, Jesus. He hired a lawyer, but but in that moment uh it we we we had a sort of a meeting of the minds.
SPEAKER_05Okay.
SPEAKER_00And uh I realized that um, you know, I was really the outsider. I I was the thing that didn't belong there. I didn't know it right then, but I I learned later as I reflected on that time that I I was the I had crossed the line just by being there and uh not really understanding how things work. Here's the good thing that came out of it.
SPEAKER_05Okay.
SPEAKER_00Even though I maybe only talked to this guy two more times in the 10 years that I lived there, because I lived there 10 years on that property, I might have only talked to him two more times. But he never did anything else to me. He never bugged me. It's kind of like we came to a country understanding that we were gonna leave each other alone. Now, that wasn't true for other people that he had borders with. He did some mean stuff to some other people, but he just left us alone. Oh, yeah. Like he this one guy he got mad at this one guy who started shooting into his barn.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, he was the guy was shooting into his barn, or this guy was shooting into the other guy's barn. Your neighbor was shooting into the other guy.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, Mr. Big Head was shooting his guns uh again. It was an accident, it could happen to anybody who had a couple of daiquaries and an elephant gun. No, uh yeah, yeah, he would he would uh terrorize the neighbors for different reasons. But but like I said, we we found a way to peacefully coexist. So that my going over to visit him was good, I think, for him, so he could see me and we could be more civilized with each other, and was good for me to learn my lessons. But uh few weeks, it might have been a few months, it's hard to remember now, but his dog was running around on my property. He's like just running amuck, and I I can see he's got something in his mouth. And I'm like, what is he doing? What did he get this time out of the trash? Well, he didn't get anything out of the trash. He was running around with a chicken.
SPEAKER_04Oh, his dog was eating the chicken.
SPEAKER_00Of course. His his dog was eating his chicken. Doesn't that make more sense? Not Scout. Scout? Scout would be afraid of a bird.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Poor Scout was afraid of everything. And Scout was a very nice dog, but she was so scared.
SPEAKER_04We had a uh, I'll just say really quickly, we had a similar, though not as dramatic, situation with when we lived uh at a spot. We had a neighbor that my dad in particular did not get along with, but um we had some boxwoods that he uh thought were shading his roses. He had rose bushes that grew grew along a fence line, which actually that fence he had made out of, we had a tree that came down in some snow, and it was a cedar tree, so a lot of relative, uh relatable things to your story.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_04And he chopped off the parts of the tree that he could use to build the fence and threw everything else back into our yard. Um, so just used our tree to build his fence and then discarded the rest. But um he had asked my dad to cut these boxwoods back, and my dad they had long feud. There were many things that happened over the course of us living there when we didn't get along for various reasons. But my dad was uh basically just said, no, I'm not I'm not cutting down the I think he used some very colorful language about what exactly he was not gonna do with the boxwoods. So we went out to eat one night, and when we came back, those boxwoods were sawed down to the ground. Oh neighbors, neighbors, he had come over with a chainsaw and just absolutely sawed them to the ground, and it was the same sort of thing. Like my my dad was not as calm as you. He did call them on the him on the phone and he used some extraordinarily colorful language, as I recall as a child. But um I I the guy just I don't remember if he denied it or he said uh he defended it because it was killing his roses.
SPEAKER_00I can't remember, but those those box would cross the line.
SPEAKER_04They crossed the line.
SPEAKER_00Nature he had to he had to get they were like the wild pigs.
SPEAKER_04And my dad wouldn't control the wild pigs, so he was gonna have to do what my dad wasn't big enough to do, I reckon.
SPEAKER_00You were probably in a suburb at that time, I'm guessing, like a regular neighborhood, right?
SPEAKER_04That's that's adorable. We didn't there there was no city to have a suburb or suburb of. It was all rural where I grew up. Okay. I mean, there was a there was a little city. It wasn't uh no city at all, but it was small.
SPEAKER_00Did you walk? Did you walk barefoot to the piggly wiggly?
SPEAKER_04You know, the piggly wiggly doesn't shut down by the time we moved in, so we didn't. And then in the summertime we might walk without shoes on, but in the winter it gets right cold now.
SPEAKER_00Well, Miss Daisy, I um yeah after this guy cuts down the boxwoods, yeah, and your dad chews them out a little bit, then what? How did they go on from there? How could they how could they get did they ever find a way to come together?
SPEAKER_04No. It was always from from there, so it was the tree before the cedar tree before that and the boxwoods after that, and then we um and this was accidental, but we had a uh we had an above-ground pool. That's right, above ground, and we were draining the water out of the pool because it was the end of the season, and we left it, and we uh again went out to we seems like we went out to eat all the time. So the water, because we were a little above them, drained down into their yard because they had an in-ground pool, they were fancier than we were. Uh, and so they called the cops on my dad that time. So when we got home, there were police officers in our yard. Um you know, it it just was always ba basically there was never any coming together.
SPEAKER_00We humans have a this ambivalent history with nature. We're fine with it until we're not, and then we just wipe it out. Wish the wild pigs would be left alone. I don't mind letting them take over the city. Let them tr let them take a run at it. We're not doing such a good job.
SPEAKER_04Absolutely. And honestly, it doesn't the city belong to the wild pigs? I mean, we're the intruders, like you were realizing about your neighbor, is yeah, it's not the pigs that are out of place, it's us.
SPEAKER_00Well, it was nice chatting with you about nature.
SPEAKER_04It was nice talking with you about the destruction of nature as well.
SPEAKER_00And uh I think you should consider having a few wild pigs in your house as pets.
SPEAKER_04In my house? I got teenagers. I don't need wild pigs, we're all set.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, they're they've like did I tell you there were 3.5 million a day are being slaughtered. So these pigs are they're mad. And their word gets spread around. It's not like, you know, they're connected, they know what's happening.
SPEAKER_04I don't doubt it. They're smart animals. Pigs are smart animals, and I'm sure they have some kind of network of communication that we're not aware of. So, yes, if the pigs are angry, it's because we keep killing them.
SPEAKER_00And they're coming for us.
SPEAKER_04They're coming for us.
SPEAKER_00Well, I want to thank you for joining me for this episode.
SPEAKER_04Thanks for having me, Ross.
SPEAKER_00If you like what we're doing, we would sure love your help. You can follow the show on Instagram or Twitter. Another thing that really helps is wherever you can rate the show, if you like it, give us a high rating and a good review. It really helps um people find the show. And we also are on Patreon and you can support us there. If you can afford to do that, that really helps us because we are completely independent. No sponsors whatsoever. And we hope you will tune in to another episode because whether you are climbing a tree to escape Godzilla or just someone tracking a murderous collydong, it's important to remember that we all smell like humans. And likeby everybody.