Episode 409: Call of the Turtle

This week we get into a cryptid famous for its size and elusiveness. The Beast of Busco in Churubusco, Indiana for decades was a mystery until one man tried his best to capture the beast. Tune in to learn the lengths Gale Harris went to capture this famed beast of the lake. Will the creature prove to be a challenge or perhaps a bigger mystery is at foot. 

Thanks for listening and remember to like, rate, review, and email us at: [e-mail] or tweet us at @C3Podcast. We have some of our sources for research here: http://tinyurl.com/CristinaSources

Also check out our Patreon: www.patreon.com/cultscryptidsconspiracies. Thank you to T.J. Shirley for our theme

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:29):
Hi, Christina, Hey Chelsea, Hey, now, oh hey, what's up?
What's up? How's it going? You know, I don't necessarily
think we need to get super deep into our personal
things that have been going on. But it's been a
hell of a week.

Speaker 2 (00:42):
And got laid off. Yeah, I'm announced it on social media.
It's fine, Yeah, it's yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:49):
That sucks ass, I'm so sorry. Yeah. Yeah. So last
week there was an episode for obvious reasons, and I'm
sure no one's upset about that. But it's been a
rough time for us recently. But we y are here
back this week where here still exist. We do. All
three of us are here, and a Cinder and Minda,
and everyone is in this room. Everyone is in this

(01:10):
room that we know of. I ghosts. What if we
were talking about secret cats earlier, we were talking about
cats we saw, and I was like, what if there's
a secret cat that lives in our home we just
don't know about.

Speaker 3 (01:21):
I would that was for a long while for me, Cinder,
a long time of me visiting your house.

Speaker 1 (01:27):
I did not see this cat. She was she was
a ghost. She was Schrodinger's cat. I mean, Seless visits
and gets to see Cinder often, but very she did.

Speaker 2 (01:40):
Okay, So Selest visited last weekend and Cinder did come
up and get pets from her for the first time.

Speaker 1 (01:45):
Correct, for like ten minutes. Strang oh, and so Celeste
was just like, I dare not move, I'm just petting.
We're letting this happen. And I was like, excellent, excellent.

Speaker 2 (01:56):
Minda got impatient as she does and wanted to play,
and so it started chasing Cinder my dog.

Speaker 1 (02:01):
My dog runs everything. But I might have a cat,
to say, well you do. She was just here where
I don't see a cat. Okay, she didn't have the
fur coating me to prove it. You have a black
cat too, don't that's true? You have a black cat.
It could be mister spots. You can't lie, she tricked us.

Speaker 2 (02:20):
She's usually like a pretty good cat, honestly, she's like,
she's like pretty well behaved, especially compared to her sister.

Speaker 1 (02:28):
But we didn't have her.

Speaker 2 (02:31):
Wet food for like a couple of weeks, and it's
like she didn't get wet food, so she got freeze
dried food instead, which I'm sitting here like that's gotta
be comparable, right, loved it, she loves it, but Apparently
she was angry enough that when we did finally get
our wet food, she tricked Malani to feeding her twice.

Speaker 1 (02:46):
Nice she Oh, yeah. I think it happened within fifteen
minutes too, because Chelsea gave her wet food and then
walked off. And then I came downstairs and grabbed something,
and then I saw her bowl was empty, entirely crazy clean,
and I was like, oh, you haven't been fed yet,
and poured it and she looked at me like yes, father, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:05):
And when I came downstairs and mouths like I fed
the cat, and I was like, what do you mean
you fed the cat.

Speaker 1 (03:11):
Yeah, that's okay. She's little. She deserves a treat every
now and then now and just a little treaty treats. Yeah,
but no, we're we're here, cod. I'm tired. I'm so tired.
We did have some fun yesterday.

Speaker 3 (03:24):
We went to a friend's birthday party and we had
some fun in the sun.

Speaker 1 (03:28):
Yeah. I recommend everyone to have some fun in the sun,
even if it's just a touch of grass sometimes.

Speaker 3 (03:33):
Do that.

Speaker 1 (03:33):
We laughed so hard at so many good things. Last
time we got home. My voice was like a little crackly,
which told me like, I had a great time.

Speaker 3 (03:41):
But listener, always be sure to wear sunscreen. Yeah, because
some people got a little toasty. Mal got a little toasty.
A little toast doesn't ever happen.

Speaker 1 (03:49):
I've never really had a sunburn. I think it's already
started it like it doesn't even it's just starty, starting
to kind of like go away apparently mild. Yea yea.
So it wasn't really a big deal. But please always
start sunscreen for so many So we actually didn't get burned. Nice.
I usually always get burned, and I did not. I
don't think I did either. I liked how bitter it was,
like like as if dipped in ranch. I think that

(04:13):
was the exact bording that she said.

Speaker 3 (04:14):
She was like, yeah, I got like dipped in ranch
because the sunscreen that I have is very thick and
like it doesn't completely like the whole day. I was like,
she looks so pale because like on her face the
sunscreen was like you could see it. You could see
the layer of sunscreen because it doesn't completely rub translucent.

Speaker 1 (04:30):
So we were in the best kind of pool of
saltwater pool. If I could only swim in saltwater pools, forever.
I would. I highly recommend saltwater pool if you wish
to own a pool.

Speaker 2 (04:42):
But what was great is that so part of the
pools in the shade. So I think that's part of
the reason I didn't get sunburned is because I tried
to stay in the shade as much as possible.

Speaker 1 (04:50):
I love how you kicked so, yeah, that's what I
was about to say. So our friend Christian is Filipino.
He's Filipino, and so he was in the shade and
I I kicked him out. I'm like, move, you're brown,
the ludest thing, the rudest thing. And I was just
fucking busted up. No. Everyone was like, Chelsea, how dare

(05:11):
he laughed? You laughed? Yes, no, Christian laughed. But also,
regardless of how much melan you have in your skin,
you need to wear sunscreen. Listener.

Speaker 3 (05:18):
Yes, I had that conversation because I was going out
the other day with Christian and Bitter Bitter, who is Hispanic.

Speaker 1 (05:24):
Yeah, and I was like.

Speaker 3 (05:25):
Do you guys want sunscreen? Both of them are like,
we have melanin, we don't need it, and I was
like mmmm, And then both of them got sunburned. Yeah,
and I was like, yeah, needs sunscreen?

Speaker 1 (05:34):
Well, like, and I don't actually normally do sunburn, but
yesterday I did, and I can't. I think the last
time I did was like over ten years ago.

Speaker 2 (05:40):
So I was just he's never sunburned as far as
we've been together.

Speaker 1 (05:44):
No, I was like, I was very surprised. So, yes,
wear sunscreen. I also have some hispanic in me. Please
wear sunscreen regardless of your melanin. I was gonna say,
what's the term they now use in D and D.
It's not hare, it is species.

Speaker 4 (05:58):
Species, regardless of I don't think that's applicable to real
life humans.

Speaker 1 (06:02):
Yeah, I guess not whether you're a birdman or a
dwarf wear sunscreen.

Speaker 3 (06:07):
I mean true, I don't know what bird people need
to wear sunscreen because they have coating of feathers.

Speaker 1 (06:11):
Do they have skin but it's under the feathers. Yeah, yes,
I guess, so you have to wear sunscreen under your
on your scalp. I don't for that nonsense.

Speaker 2 (06:21):
I I just in case because I'm I have a
history of melanoma in my family that's happened on the head.

Speaker 1 (06:27):
But I still spray my head. That's fair. You have
so many weaknesses because I'm white. That's not why I
said it, but I mean, you just have so many weaknesses.

Speaker 2 (06:36):
I'm I just also gives me a weak stomach. Although
I do handle spice better than you.

Speaker 1 (06:43):
That's that's a low bar. That that's a little bar. Maw.
We don't need to talk about it. Just Chico Pepper,
who was the first one's delicious, the second one was
pain Anyway, they're so mild.

Speaker 3 (06:58):
This has been called scryptids and PSAs where we talk
community notes.

Speaker 1 (07:02):
Perhaps wear sunscreen.

Speaker 3 (07:03):
We give you our advice about how to, you know,
be safe and healthy and have a fun time.

Speaker 2 (07:09):
Not only should you wear so I have two kinds
of face sunscreen. I have the face sunscreen I put
on in the morning, and then I have a spray
sunscreen because sometimes I wear makeup. I have a spray
sunscreen for my face that I wear that I put
on throughout the day.

Speaker 1 (07:21):
And that's the way you do it. It's go so yep. Also,
always remember to sunscreen your tattoos no matter what or else.
We're going to fade real quick. I mean, if we're
just doing PSS, I mean, always change your socks because
that's just a really smart thing to do sure make
sure you know how often? How often should you change
yourself every day? At least every day day if you

(07:42):
are hiking, if you're backpacking.

Speaker 2 (07:44):
What you want to do is you want to change
your socks at night, and the socks you sleep in
at night as the ones you wear the next day
to go hiking, because you sleep.

Speaker 1 (07:52):
It in socks while you're camping.

Speaker 2 (07:54):
Because I'm backpack in places where it snows and sometimes
like even when I'm backpacking, snow is still there.

Speaker 1 (08:00):
You got to keep your your body temperature, somebody once
told me. And this was a thing where, uh, I
was playing do you guys know the game Guess Who?

Speaker 3 (08:09):
Of course we were playing a version of Guess Who
where you're not allowed to give physical descriptors. They can't
be qualitative. They have to like vibes based. So it's like,
this guy looks like he would go to a farmer's market.

Speaker 1 (08:18):
Incredible. And so what the person asked is does your
person look like they sleep with socks on? And I'm like,
what does that mean? What does that mean? What does
that look like? Such a fiend? Yeah, I only have
ever slept a socks on while backpacking.

Speaker 3 (08:35):
If you're I mean, like, if you want to sleep
with socks, I'm sure, but I don't know what a
person who does that looks like.

Speaker 1 (08:39):
And I'm just like, I imagine someone who sleeps with
their socks on is someone who the vibe is Also
this guy really loves granola. I mean, maybe it's business
times other PSAs. You know, if you're getting close to
the to the middle of the night, you know you've
got to go to bed soon. Don't forget to spend
your spu slots. It's really important to spend your spell

(09:01):
up slots because you're going to get new ones in
the morning. You're gonna get at rest and get new
ones in the morning. You can't you can't take them
with you. You can you can't. Can't pile on spell slots.
I don't roll over. It would be really funny. It's
just like one day, I have fifty level one spells
ready to go.

Speaker 3 (09:15):
It's free treads out there, just good berry all of
the rest of your spell slots right before you go
to bed.

Speaker 1 (09:21):
Yes, yes, and then you have so many berries. And
then the thing is the berries last twenty four hours.
So the next morning you've got.

Speaker 3 (09:27):
Bread, you've got breakfast, you've got lunch and dinner because
they fill your stomach for the whole day.

Speaker 1 (09:31):
You're just so sets are just so cool.

Speaker 3 (09:34):
Anyway, anyway, welcome, Everyone's do cult scripts and conspiracies where
we will be serious from well, no we won't, but
we will be on topic going forward. Well probably we
talk about things that are cult scryptids and conspiracies. We
talk about hauntings, we talk about mysterious disappearances, mysterious phenomenon,
weird little guys from history. Uh, just any any old

(09:55):
weird occult thing or sometimes science thing that we want
to talk.

Speaker 1 (09:58):
If it catches our interest, we talk to you about
it because we want you to look into it. Because
you should learn things too, because learning is fun. Yeah, educating,
it's fundamental. Educating yourself is incredibly fun. To be honest,
I ask you things all the time. I'll send you
messages to be like hey, blah blah blah, how blah
blah blah, and you I really appreciate it. Every time
You're like, oh, well it's this.

Speaker 2 (10:17):
And I was trying to remember what the last thing was,
and it was that you and Celester are outside trying
to figure out how tall a tree was.

Speaker 1 (10:23):
You did ask how tall is this?

Speaker 3 (10:25):
How tall do you think this tree is relative to
the house, And then we had a discussion about how
to determine the hy u tree.

Speaker 1 (10:31):
So many good examples of like, oh well if you
try this, and like measuring the shadow was one there.
I was like, oh, genius, that's really cool because Celeste
was like, if I stood next to the tree, then
we could find out how big the tree is. And
I was like, do you know how tall you are?
And she was like, I can't remember. You would need
to know how tall a celest is.

Speaker 3 (10:48):
But a celeste is an easier unit of measurements to
figure out.

Speaker 1 (10:52):
If you can get the ice I think.

Speaker 3 (10:53):
I said, if you can get the whole tree or
in the picture and then you put celestie next to it,
you can figure out how many celestes tall the tree
the tree.

Speaker 1 (11:00):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I really appreciate We sometimes just like
how do you do this? Thermodynamics came up a lot yesterday.
We were in a pool.

Speaker 2 (11:10):
Yeah, we were in a pool that had warm spots
and cold spots because of how deep.

Speaker 1 (11:14):
The water is. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (11:16):
I had a beach entrance instead of the stairs, which
I think are I think a beach entrance is superior.

Speaker 1 (11:23):
Yeah, they got such a great pool, such an educate
yourself about science. Jupiter is not bigger than the sun. No, no, no,
it's not not even close. I know that one. No,
we always knew, wink wink that one.

Speaker 2 (11:40):
You can't make fun of you for anything because of
the education you got while growing up.

Speaker 1 (11:44):
There was a question I asked you this week where
I was like, all right, hold on, I don't know this,
let me just ask this. I don't remember what it
was though. I don't either, but I remember staring at
you and being like we were in publish. I don't remember.

Speaker 2 (11:56):
It's like the thing is, he'll ask me things and
I'm like staring at him, like I don't know if
you're seriously asking me this or if you're just fucking
with me, because sometimes he is just fucking with me.

Speaker 1 (12:05):
I do like to be difficult. We understand that. Yeah, yeah,
I know what I'm about, and so does everyone else. Sadly,
for their detriment, we all know what you're about. We do.

Speaker 2 (12:15):
But it is fun to teach you new things. The
dinosaur story is still everyone's favorite story.

Speaker 1 (12:20):
I do love learning new things.

Speaker 3 (12:21):
There was an XKCD comic once, which was about how
like someone who's learning a new thing every day, and
your response should be with wonderment about.

Speaker 1 (12:30):
Like, oh, you get to be you get to be
the person who learns this. I think it's like you're
one of the ten thousand people, yeah, who's learning a
new thing today. Yeah, And I love that.

Speaker 2 (12:39):
I think about that every time they'll asks me a question,
and I get to teach him. When we first started dating,
I had to teach him about abortion because that was
that was a really interesting one. Actually, yeah, no, which
was a huge green flag because at first it.

Speaker 1 (12:54):
Was a red flag and it was great. Well, yes, okay,
that's true. So here's the thing.

Speaker 2 (13:00):
I want to just explain this real quick, just because
it was it was interesting. But if you don't want
me to, that's fine.

Speaker 1 (13:04):
I don't. I don't know. Okay. When we first started.

Speaker 2 (13:06):
Dating, we met on Okay Cupid, so and okay Cupid has.

Speaker 1 (13:10):
A whole like I side tangent because that's what the
podcast is actually about. It's about tangents. I promised that
we were going to be on topic and that was
a lie. That was a lie. I'm sorry I missed
the questions and okay, cubid and be able to answer
them collectively with someone you're like interested in their dating,
because I was like, those questions were fun. I want fun.
I want just an app. That's just that I don't
want to match with people. I just want to be

(13:30):
like funny questions. Anyway, I want to find I want
to buzz QUI, I want it. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (13:36):
But one of the questions on it that it's like
you also get to determine, like how high of a
priority is this to you? And I said this was
like a pretty high priority for me, which is like
do you believe in a woman's right to choose? And
I was like yes, and this is really important. And
Mal answered that question and I remember it gave me
pause because he said.

Speaker 1 (13:53):
Because you could put like the simple answer yes no,
and then you have the option you don't have to
of explaining yourself.

Speaker 2 (13:58):
And so he he put yes, but that he didn't
like it, and I was like okay, but he did
put yes.

Speaker 1 (14:07):
And it was like a month or two into.

Speaker 2 (14:09):
Us dating and he'd asked me what happens if you
get pregnant because he because we had talked about birth control,
which I was on at the time, and I said, well,
at this point in my life, if I got pregnant,
I would probably get an abortion.

Speaker 1 (14:22):
He got really kind of quiet, and I was like,
is this the end? And he's like, I'm just I'm
just worried.

Speaker 2 (14:29):
Like it's your choice obviously, like you get to decide.

Speaker 1 (14:33):
I'm just worried. And I'm like, why are you worried?

Speaker 2 (14:36):
And he said, well, because I don't want you to
get cancer. And I was like, time out, Oh, time out.
He'll explained his super conservative Christian private school had told
him that if you get an abortion, you will get
breast cancer, which is a very common thing.

Speaker 1 (14:52):
Actually I'm a myth. Myth. Yeah. I was just like
and she was explained this to me, and I was
like I thought that you'd like die.

Speaker 2 (15:01):
Yeah, and like abortion is actually safer than birth than
giving birth, and he was like what And I explained
it all to him and he was like, oh.

Speaker 1 (15:11):
Fuck the conservatives. And I was like, green flag, Yeah,
you don't get cancer. So you learned another thing today,
listener grew up in a super conservative Christian household, you
have now learned abortion does not give you cancer and
is in fact safer than giving birth.

Speaker 3 (15:26):
If you grew up in a super conservative Christian household
and you somehow made it here, well one of you.

Speaker 1 (15:31):
No, we could. They could be the person in the
family that is like the air quot black sheep who's
just like I need some kind of content to make
me not connected to conservatism.

Speaker 2 (15:41):
Well, listen, mall escaped and he I still had to
inform him of the reality of the situation.

Speaker 1 (15:46):
For sure.

Speaker 3 (15:46):
I'm just over here just like, this is a weird
place to end up in general.

Speaker 1 (15:51):
On our podcast. Yeah, yeah, but you know we're glad
you're here a listener. Yeah, anyway, that's it. That's all.
I don't have anything for this sometimes, so that's really it.
All right, Well, then do we want to just move
into my topic for today? I would love that. Sure, excellent.

Speaker 3 (16:04):
All right, everyone, we're going to move into my topic
for today, which I promise is going to be fine.

Speaker 1 (16:08):
But first let's have a brief word from our sponsors.
It could be a bummer, Like, it doesn't have to
be fun. The listener is now imprisoned here with us
to listen to it. They can't escape.

Speaker 2 (16:19):
I will say that because I already have my topic
for next week. It is interesting and kind of fun
to be able to talk about.

Speaker 1 (16:26):
But it is sad, so we'll have to put the
barmber collacs in. All right, Pazzi interesting, Okay, crazy trade?

Speaker 3 (16:37):
Oh, I thought we were still in the sponsor break.

Speaker 1 (16:39):
I don't know. I mean, we're just talking. I see,
I see, I see, I understand. I'm just using words
or not. That's all up to him. See, We'll see
how I feel at the moment. Mood.

Speaker 2 (16:52):
Yeah, all right, I've got my embroidery. I'm making a
quilt of seattle for our dear friend Gen.

Speaker 1 (17:06):
I will say, I don't know if it's a quilt.
It will be when I'm done with it. I know.

Speaker 3 (17:10):
The definition of a quilt is many pieces of fabric
sewn together. You're making a tapestry. You're embroidering one big.

Speaker 2 (17:17):
Piece of fast think, all right, that's fair, it's it's
when I got the pattern. It is marketed as a
quilt pattern.

Speaker 3 (17:24):
But maybe for seo purposes me things. Possibly, Yeah, because
because you're not taking multiple pieces of fabric and sewing
them together to make the design, you are embroidering a
pond the design upon the fabric.

Speaker 2 (17:35):
Yes, and then it will it will have the batting,
and it will have the back piece of fast.

Speaker 1 (17:39):
So it will have the like thickness of a quilt.
It so be a blanket, it really for it will
it will at the very least be a blanket. It
will be an excellent blanket. Whether or not it accounts
as a quilt as kind of semantics at this point,
it doesn't really matter. I'm making. I'm making a blanket
for our dear friend Jen.

Speaker 3 (17:57):
And I was at gen Con recently. Yes, unrelated to
the friend Jen. Oh, Yes, differently and spelled completely differently.
Over the last weekend, I was in Indianapolis, Indiana at
gen Con.

Speaker 1 (18:09):
Not Minneapolis.

Speaker 3 (18:12):
I saw that joke coming and I immediately shot that down. Yeah,
so it was. It was a good fun time. I
recommend it was a good con.

Speaker 1 (18:19):
Why is the city so small? Oh maw So.

Speaker 3 (18:23):
While I was there, I met up with a guy
named Rev from the Critch Show podcast, which is a
very fun podcast, and a very cool dude, very nice.
We were chatting. He's a local, and he told me
about a famous Indiana creature known as the Beast of Busco.

Speaker 1 (18:40):
Oh. Y'all know how I love a beast. You do
love a beast. I love a beast. So the second
that he was like, oh yeah, beast at Busco is like,
tell me everything.

Speaker 2 (18:49):
Is that Indiana's cryptid? Essentially, I think it's one of them. Okay,
probably is.

Speaker 1 (18:54):
An Indiana clos ish to the Midwest Indiana. Yeah, I
mean technically I think it is considered Midwest. But the
middle country is so like the way that we break
up the United States is stupid, I think, because like
we have we have like New England, the South, yea,
the West, and then the Midwest, which is the entire center.

(19:18):
Yeah yeah, I like, how well because the whole like
New England was the thing, and it's like and then
the journey to own the West and oppress everyone who
originally lived there. Yeah, so all of that past New
England is the West. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (19:32):
Another fun one because there is the South and then
there are places that are considered the Deep South, and
the deep South is like Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi. But Florida,
which is south of all of those, is just the South,
not the Deep South.

Speaker 3 (19:47):
It is again doesn't make no sense. No, it doesn't
make no sense at all. But the story goes about
the bes of Busco that there was once a farmer
named Oscar Folk who owned seven acres near Churubusco, which
is a small area in Indiana, small town, Indiana. Near

(20:07):
his farm, there was a lake which would go on
to be known as Folk Lake. F u l k
f u l k f u lk Lake.

Speaker 1 (20:16):
It's so nice. I like what we do stories on
the podcast because we're almost the episode four hundred. No,
we're past. We're in the four yeah. Uh where we're
telling stories and blah blah blah and Simpson's were like
the name of X place and lake you just said
that person's name. It was named after this person. Oh
my god.

Speaker 3 (20:34):
Yeah, we've been that agory of history where it's like
this is named after that guy. So the Folk Lake
takes up about nine acres, which I went on a
little bit of a tangent here because apparently this was
referred to as the small end of a lake. And
I was once again like, what counts as a lake?
Where's the line between lake and pond?

Speaker 1 (20:54):
Yeah? Hey, science, Christina, Yeah, can you tell me the
difference between the lake and a pond? Is?

Speaker 3 (20:58):
No, Oh, it's heavily debated, it is, the answer is
because I can't say what the difference is, because there
are so many people who have who have different definitions.

Speaker 2 (21:10):
The Internet was having a huge debate on the difference
between a creek and a creek, and some people are like,
because I thought it was like the same thing, just
different accents, and it's not. But I still am unsure
what the difference is.

Speaker 1 (21:21):
Well, like a delta a day loser also different too,
it's a whole thing.

Speaker 3 (21:25):
So for the lake versus pond thing, a lot of
people talk about there being like tidal motion, because lakes
are supposed to have like tidal motion from connection motion
of water waves whatnot.

Speaker 1 (21:37):
Large ponds can have that too.

Speaker 3 (21:39):
Small ponds can have that too, especially if they're springs
where they have like a inland or Yeah, so there
is the argument of size.

Speaker 1 (21:48):
There is a lot of debate.

Speaker 3 (21:49):
About what the cutoff is between lake and pond. So
according to Wikipedia, the cutoff for what makes something a
lake versus a pond is often said to be five acres,
which sounds like a.

Speaker 5 (22:01):
Big ass pond to me. But I mean, like, let's
take a national park. National parks have lakes and then
they might at the side have small ponds, yeah, for
like fish or stuff. Like that, like koi fish ponds.

Speaker 2 (22:15):
As for example, I will say to me as a
and this is probably also wrong to me as a
California in a pond, uh could dry up and then
re for Yeah, because depending on the changing of the season.
That's it, that's all I got. But that's also like
a size thing.

Speaker 1 (22:36):
Lakes can happen, that can happen to That's the.

Speaker 3 (22:39):
Issue with trying to find a hard delineation because there
is no definition of what makes a lake versus a
pond different that applies to all bodies of water, because
there's a lot of them that are that's there's a
lakes that don't have tidal motion, there are ponds that do.
There are lakes that are like very very big. There
are allegedly like ponds. The thing is that the thing
about ponds being five acres being the cut off, that's

(23:01):
the small end of the scale. Some people claim that
it's actually more than that. So depending upon your definition
of what a lake is, folk lake is not a
lake is the.

Speaker 1 (23:11):
Thing is folk like nine acres Like you said, yeah,
I would imagine nine acres is you're on one end
of the pond. You cannot identify someone on the other
side of the pond lake, but you cannot identify that
tells me it's a lake.

Speaker 2 (23:22):
No, because I grew up going to a lake called
Lake Kirkwood and from one end to the like depending
on where you are, because the lake.

Speaker 1 (23:33):
Isn't like perfectly circled.

Speaker 2 (23:35):
No, right, yeah, there are places where on one end
to the other, I could still identify a person on
the other side.

Speaker 3 (23:42):
That's the issue because like they're not continuously like distanced
or space there. Also, their depths are not continuous, so
you can't say like, oh, yeah, a lake is the
steep versus a pond, that's the steep. It it's you
can't make an easy this definition.

Speaker 1 (23:57):
It's like we're not talking about cryptid after all.

Speaker 3 (23:59):
In fact, we're just talking about the contentious world of
identifying lakes.

Speaker 1 (24:03):
Yes.

Speaker 3 (24:03):
No, I all of this to say, this is a
rabbit hole. I fell down and trying to be like,
how big is a lake?

Speaker 1 (24:10):
And listener, you should fall into this rabbit hole too. Fine,
it's interesting, but rabbit holes are the best, true. But
any who, Anyway, In eighteen ninety eight, senators put her
tail directly in my mouth, ser could you get off? No? No, hi,
I love you too. Oh she's kneading. Oh she's so cute.

(24:32):
That kills me every time she flopped against me.

Speaker 3 (24:35):
She's kneading my crochet project, and she flopped against my
chest anyway. So in eighteen ninety eight, Old Oscar, as
I will refer to him, was fishing around his maybe lake,
maybe pond, folk lake when he saw something moving in
the water. So, of course we don't know what actually happened,
but I like to.

Speaker 1 (24:53):
Do a little theater of the mind. I like to
imagine he was on.

Speaker 3 (24:56):
His little boat, just fishing away and he sees something
passed just below the surface. Oh, maybe it was just
a vague shape he couldn't make out immediately. Maybe he
did the thing where he squinted through the murk of
the water, craning his neck over the side of the
boat as he watched it rise up and get closer.

Speaker 1 (25:15):
For someone who doesn't see pictures in their mind, you're
really painting one for us.

Speaker 3 (25:18):
I have to, because like I need to describe it
for me to know what's happening.

Speaker 1 (25:24):
You know, or else you just have no frame.

Speaker 3 (25:26):
My writing style is over describing illustration because I don't
make mental images.

Speaker 1 (25:31):
That's great. So this wasn't your average This what he
saw he recognized as a turtle. But this wasn't your
average turtle.

Speaker 3 (25:39):
This wasn't a you know, painted turtle or a yellow
bellied slider, as I've learned, are both native to this
area of Indiana.

Speaker 1 (25:46):
Oh, this was a.

Speaker 3 (25:47):
Massive five hundred pound snapping turtle.

Speaker 1 (25:51):
Now, turtles and tortoises can be incredibly heavy. Yes, they
can get very big. There. I do this a much
harder life in between turtle and tortoise because that's dependent
on their their spec They're different species, yeah, different climates
also different species, yes, yes, but they're never mind.

Speaker 3 (26:11):
They live in different areas. They can have you can't
have both in the same area.

Speaker 1 (26:14):
Yeah, but they did. It's like, uh the way my brawl.

Speaker 3 (26:19):
They definitely usually they fill out different ecological niches, so
they're not often in competition for food.

Speaker 1 (26:25):
Turtles are more aquatic than tortoises. Interesting generally speaking. Generally speaking,
are they both reptiles? Yes, well, I have opinions about that.

Speaker 3 (26:34):
I don't think because because turtles split off from the
family tree, you know, the the reptile family tree, much
earlier than a lot of other species did, Like birds
for example.

Speaker 1 (26:45):
So if you're gonna say that birds aren't reptiles, then
turtles shouldn't be either. In categorize them more as amphibians
like a frog.

Speaker 3 (26:52):
No, because amphibians require wet skin to breathe, turtles do not.

Speaker 1 (26:57):
That's why frogs are amphibians. Frogs are amphibian.

Speaker 3 (27:00):
They have they have an aquatic lifestyle by necessity, whereas
turtles technically don't. Well I shouldn't say that, but from
my understanding, the majority of turtles don't technically need to
be in water.

Speaker 1 (27:10):
They know, I think they need to be in water,
but they don't need to breathe in water.

Speaker 3 (27:15):
They don't know goods because they're they're adapted to water.
But they are not requiring one of us biologists.

Speaker 1 (27:22):
None of us are biologists. That's that's an important thing
you should understand. Listener. Yes, yes, we have a biologists
that listen to this podcast. So let us know. I'm
sure they're gonna we're gonna get emails, say an email
about all of this. So we see ads five hundred
pounds snapping turtle, damn. And so that may be a thing.

Speaker 3 (27:39):
If you're not familiar with snapping turtles, that may be
a difficult thing for you to imagine, because even if
you are, it's like, well, how heavy is a normal
snapping turtle? And I don't, right, what's the scale here?
So I went ahead and I did some quick and
dirty math using alligator snapping turtles as a base and
sense and nana for scale, since they are needed to
the area and they are the most common thing. People

(27:59):
say this to look like most people associate the beast
of Busco with an alligator snapping turtle. So, extrapolating from
turtle stats that I found online, a five hundred pound
turtle would be almost seventy inches long, which is over
five feet of turtle.

Speaker 1 (28:16):
Thank you, thank you for that part. That is bigger.
That's bigger than me. I was gonna say than me,
but five foot fives I'm sixty five inches to it
would be oval in shape. Yes, So now that's like.

Speaker 3 (28:27):
That's like we're talking from like tip to tail. Yeah,
by taller.

Speaker 1 (28:32):
But it like if it if it could go on
its hind legs would but it's also wide and it
would take my wallet, yeah it would, So it would
take your wallet and the rest of your lower body.

Speaker 2 (28:40):
I think so, yeah, it would it would take the
arm that your wallet was being held in.

Speaker 1 (28:44):
For sure. That's a big guy. So what would you
guys do in this situation?

Speaker 3 (28:49):
If you're in your little your little fishing boat on
your little lake and you see a five foot over
five feet of alligator snapping turtle rising them free level one?

Speaker 1 (28:57):
The thing is that like I would I think I
would freeze two. So I'd be like, that's slightly terrifying,
but it's not exactly aggressive. It is. No turtles are aggressive.
Snapping turtles are terrifying. Never mind, I think I might
hit it with an oar.

Speaker 2 (29:10):
I would freeze because I was not prepared. I think
camping for a lot of time when I was a kid,
I have learned how to handle with bears and various wildlife.

Speaker 1 (29:21):
Turtles never came up.

Speaker 3 (29:23):
So it's not something that in our daily lives we're instructed.

Speaker 1 (29:29):
This is what happens when you encounter a turtle. It's
like all the things where it's like if there's an earthquake,
if you're on fire. No one has ever instructed me
how to be safe for turtles.

Speaker 2 (29:35):
I've got rattlesnakes, I've got mountain lions, I've got grizzly bears.

Speaker 1 (29:39):
I don't know turtles. The only turtle information.

Speaker 3 (29:42):
I've ever been given is if you see a turtle
like walking about, don't try and pick it up. And
that's good advice for everyone, but also especially for snapping
turtles many kind, because they will just take your fingers.

Speaker 1 (29:53):
That's actually gay for old reptiles. Yeah, if you don't
know what it is, you see it. Even if you
do know what it is, leave it alone. I've he
knows his business.

Speaker 2 (30:01):
I think I've told the story of lizard friend on
this podcast several times.

Speaker 1 (30:05):
Several times. Yeah, Yeah, there's no reason to do. The
lizard knows why it's there. The chyle has an agenda
and a daily task. He's doing it. Let him be.

Speaker 3 (30:13):
So in this situation, if I was in my little
fishing boat and I saw this big ass turtle, even
if the turtle was not like coming near me, and
I just saw it swim by, but it was over
five feet long, I think I would get the hell
out of the water. Yes, I think that would be
the end of my fishing day. Yes, which I guess.
Maybe that just proves I'm not dedicated to the art
of fishing like Master folk was because he continued, he's

(30:34):
because what it said.

Speaker 1 (30:36):
It said he made a new friend.

Speaker 3 (30:38):
He like like went on and then at the end
of his fishing day, he went and like told everybody
because this is the funny thing. He did the thing
that I would do immediately after getting out of the water,
I would go and tell everyone.

Speaker 1 (30:51):
I'd be like, absolutely, I saw the wildest thing. I
saw this giant's hand and I caught salmon. And I
caught I mean, I think I don't know if there's
salmon in for lake, but salmon into lake fish right,
And I think salmon are fresh water.

Speaker 3 (31:06):
They salmon are primarily in their adult form saltwater creatures.
They live in the ocean, but when they come into
freshwater to spawn, they stream back to their spawning ponds
where they are living. They trans they transition into a
freshwater being temporarily to spawn, and then they spend their
juvenile years after hatching in the freshwater area and then

(31:27):
as they get older, swim into the sea.

Speaker 1 (31:29):
My problem is face where I was like, I mean,
I have to explain salmon. I'm thinking of all that
I know about salmon from Stardoo Valley salmon.

Speaker 3 (31:43):
If you encounter salmon in a river, it is because
they're swimming up to their spawning pools, where they will
then spawn and then immediately die. Okay, if you encounter
them in a pond, it's because they are likely juvenile
salmon who are not yet ready to go into the ocean.
If you encounter an adult salmon that is not transformed
into a weird spaw creature because they do that, it's crazy,
then you're in the ocean.

Speaker 1 (32:04):
Those ones are good to eat. I mean, they're all
good to eat. Yeah, they're actually even the word breeding
spawning on it. It depends. I hate that. I just
used the word breeding spawning. I I I don't like
it either. AnyWho, So how many fish did he catch?

Speaker 3 (32:18):
It doesn't say it was wiped out of his memory
because he saw that giant turtle, and that's all he
wanted to talk about, was that giant turtle.

Speaker 1 (32:24):
That's fair, which is you know, a mood. So he
went and told everybody about it.

Speaker 3 (32:30):
And apparently he told a bunch of friends and people
in town about this giant turtle, but no one believed him.

Speaker 1 (32:37):
Well, I mean, with a lot of cryptic stories we
hear out there, or that we've covered in this podcast.
Usually that happens or someone's like, oh, I saw this
thing out in the woods, and one's like that makes
absolutely no sense. It's like, oh, Oscar, you're just telling
the tall tale here, Like here's the thing.

Speaker 2 (32:50):
People, especially, I feel like fishermen especially are known to
like exaggerate stories like that.

Speaker 1 (32:57):
This big war is it? Well, it got away, it's
actually Yeah, how do you prove that you saw an
over five foot alligator snapping turtle? Yeah? Yeah, because, for context,
the largest snapping turtle ever recorded. That is up for
some debate because there are people who claim certain weights,
but you can't back that up. They don't have.

Speaker 3 (33:16):
Hard verified measurements or documentation. However, some of the claims
are around two hundred to two hundred and fifty pounds,
so we're talking half the size.

Speaker 1 (33:26):
And that's for the largest.

Speaker 3 (33:27):
That's the largest recorded alligator snapping turtle people are saying
is over two hundred to two hundred and thirty And the.

Speaker 2 (33:35):
Alligator snapping turtle is specifically the one that is native
to this area.

Speaker 3 (33:39):
There's a lot of turtles native to this area. There
are also a bunch of like snapping turtles. Other snapping turtles.

Speaker 1 (33:43):
They are native to this area. Okay, but the alligator
snapping turtle is the one that most people associate with
the beast of Busco. They say that was the one
that it was, and I'm assuming by the conversation of
a two hundred and fifty pound alligator snapping turtle, it's
probably also the bigger of the turtles in that area too.
They are fairly large. Ou there. Snapping turtles are real big,
and they also are bulky. Aren't those also the ones

(34:05):
that they sell in pet stores? Probably but probably also irresponsibly.
Yeah oh yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 (34:12):
I mean listen, just because they sell it a pet
store doesn't mean that it's a pet good.

Speaker 1 (34:15):
If you want a reptile, do not go to pet Co.

Speaker 3 (34:19):
So when he's coming through, when Oscar is telling people
that there's something that's twice.

Speaker 1 (34:24):
As big, which is living in a maybe pond in
northern Indiana, Everyone's like, could be a lake. Maybe a pond,
might be a lake. Everyone's like, nah, bro, we don't
buy that. So eventually Oscar just stopped talking about it. Yeah,
because yeah, yeah, no one believes me about my big
turtle story.

Speaker 3 (34:41):
I'll just shut up and I just will just stop
talking about it, which could never be me. To be honest,
I would be chasing that turtle like a less murderous.

Speaker 1 (34:48):
Ahab, I would say, I would be on that turtle
twenty four seven. Never shut up a bit. I know
you're up there, I know you're here. You son up
a bit.

Speaker 3 (34:59):
So the century earned, the years passed, and many years
down the line, Oscar folk sold the farm. Allegedly, the
new owners also caught sight of this giant turtle beasts
in the lake, but they two decided to just leave
it alone. That's the turtle's lake now. But have you
because like, have you seen the damage that alligator snapping?

(35:20):
Have you guys seen that gift of the alligator snapping
turtle biting an apple in half?

Speaker 1 (35:23):
Yes?

Speaker 3 (35:23):
Yes, that that's an alligator snapping turtle.

Speaker 1 (35:26):
Yeah. Those things are like they're strong and they're brutal.
I did math again. A normal snapping turtle's bite can
hate is the is equivalent to the force of a
fridge dropping on you. Dang, I was gonna.

Speaker 2 (35:38):
I would want to know what the because everyone's like
the bite that everyone thinks about is like a pit
bull bite, So I'm curious.

Speaker 1 (35:44):
Is still like the comparison there. Well, but here's the question.
Pitples are known for being able to clamp and lock.
Can snapping turtles do that? Yes? Ah, so then it
sounds like the snapping turtle's stronger in that sense.

Speaker 3 (35:57):
It depends, I mean, because there's variety the statistics when
I was looking this up, because there's bite force comparisons.

Speaker 1 (36:03):
They just have like dog generally, and they say that
like a.

Speaker 3 (36:06):
Dog can bite you at like a thousand newtons of force,
and that is like a human is usually like seven.

Speaker 1 (36:13):
Hundred or something.

Speaker 3 (36:14):
It's a force like dogs obviously can bite harder than
we can. There's variety within dogs, like a Chihuaba's not
gonna be able to bite you as hard as again, a.

Speaker 1 (36:21):
Pit bull or a German shepherd or Yeah.

Speaker 3 (36:24):
There's a lot of variety in that. Then there's also
they talk about like alligator snapping turtles. They said it
was something like eighteen hundred days a force, So the
average snapping turtle can bite harder than the average dog.

Speaker 1 (36:38):
But that doesn't include variation for breed. I mean, it
feels like to me, the allegator snapping turtle still wins
though probably yeah, probably, Yeah, So that means that alligator
snapping turtles can kill. I mean, if anything is dedicated enough,
if got it in their mind. That's why you don't
pick up alligator sapping turtle. Just fucking duct tape a
knife to a bird can kill. Yes, yeah, so.

Speaker 3 (37:01):
CROs can hold a grudge. But again, that is the
normal turtle. That's the average alligator snapping turtle. A monster turtle, like, no,
thank you. That thing is that's taking you away.

Speaker 1 (37:13):
If it's if it's almost like seven feet tall.

Speaker 3 (37:16):
Five feet five field, it's over five feet over five
ft long seventy seventy inches, if.

Speaker 1 (37:21):
It's over fifty five feet long, his mouth could definitely
grab that boat and crunch, oh for sure.

Speaker 5 (37:28):
Yeah yeah, so yeah, yeah, that's that's the late. The
turtle belongs that late.

Speaker 1 (37:33):
The lake belongs to that turtle. Yees. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (37:36):
So the decades pass and eventually another man comes to
own the farm and his name is Gail Harris.

Speaker 1 (37:44):
Gail Gail.

Speaker 3 (37:46):
So the year is now nineteen forty eight. Two men
push their own fishing boat out onto Folk Lake in
the heat of July to do some fishing. Their names
were Aura Blue and Charlie Wilson, and they too apparently
encountered this giant beast in the water. Unknown explorers dot
Com says they went and they told Gail Harris about it,

(38:07):
the owner of the land. Presumably they knew this man
and had permission to fish in this lake. Sure, so
they went and told him about it, and they that
only happened again when they were done fishing.

Speaker 1 (38:18):
So I'm like, why would you not again? That'd be
the first thing I do. I see this turtle, I
leave the water, and I tell everyone about it. But
apparently I'm just not dedicated enough to the game.

Speaker 2 (38:28):
Mad had an interesting question earlier about fishing on private property.
Do you still need a fishing license if you're doing
it on your own private property?

Speaker 1 (38:35):
Your private property, you own it the like I's say
those river on your property getting straight through the land
you own your nine acres. Can you just fish there
withou a license?

Speaker 3 (38:44):
I think that if the river is moving through your
property but is not stocked with fish that you put there,
like for instance, if there are wildfish that can move
freely through your property, I believe you do still need
a license to hunt them.

Speaker 1 (38:56):
Interesting or fish them in this instance, interesting because these
are not captive fish. They are wild. Yeah. Interesting, but
if you own the whole lake though, if you own
the whole lake. But again, are the fish able to
like leave and come back? Yeah, because they are these
captive fish or these wild fish. Because some fish you

(39:16):
aren't allowed to catch, and so you have to have
a license to make sure that makes sense. Yeah, okay, Cinder,
she's got her mouth open. That's so she can get
the big sniffing. It's a big it's a no, she
needs a big sniff mouth breed. Gotta tasted baby.

Speaker 3 (39:32):
But yeah, no, sorry, So I took a took a
second to be like, why do you keep You see
a kaiju turtle and you just aside that you're just
going to keep fishing for a few hours.

Speaker 1 (39:41):
Any fishermen are like, they're a different breed, different breed.
They're in it. They're a loss in the sauce. So anyway,
they went back to shore and they told Gail they
saw this huge thing that was at least five hundred pounds,
And Gail believed the story. But the local turtle experts
named Rusty Red also heard it. And it was Rusty
Reid for a turtle expert too. So now, like reading

(40:06):
a job, I think more about it.

Speaker 3 (40:07):
Reading further articles, I was under the impression that Rusty
Reid was a contemporary of these men. He may not
have been. I think he was, but because I saw
a lot of articles that he lived at the same
time as them all I see. Yes, I saw a
lot of articles that were getting his opinion on the situation.
But a lot of the articles framed it as like

(40:28):
this man was alive at the time of them, and
a lot of articles were like mate, gave me the
impression that this wasn't after the.

Speaker 1 (40:34):
Fact like judgment on things.

Speaker 3 (40:37):
So I'm not entirely certain, but Rusty Reid his opinion
of the Global Turtle expert Rusty reis yea. His opinion
was that these two men, Aura and Charles were just
Charlie I should say, we're just trying to mess with
mister Harris.

Speaker 1 (40:51):
Sure that he was apparently known to be gullible and
these guys were kind of screwing with him. Also a
fisherman thing. I feel yeah too.

Speaker 3 (41:00):
Yeah, And so maybe he was gullible, maybe he believed it,
maybe he was in on the joke, he knew that
this was fake, or maybe he actually believed they saw
something because not long afterwards, Gayo Harris comes into town
claiming that he too had now seen what was being
called the Beast of Busco. Interesting, he's now saying, like,

(41:23):
I saw it also, I went out there and I
saw this giant turtle.

Speaker 2 (41:26):
I would like to pausit another theory. All of them
knew it was bullshit, but tourism money.

Speaker 1 (41:31):
Well we'll get into that. More people started fishing.

Speaker 3 (41:34):
So, unlike everyone before whom who was content to let
the turtle be, Gaio Harris was adamant about catching it.
He didn't see it for a second time until almost
a year later. But after that, Gaie decided that he
needed to get a posse together and try to capture
the beast.

Speaker 1 (41:49):
Sure, so Gail managed to gather some people from the
town and they crafted a sort of net out of
steaks and chicken wire. Was this again? This was nineteen
forty nine, now right, time in their hands. They had
a lot of time on their hands.

Speaker 3 (42:03):
And well, I mean they were farmers also, so they
should like at least scale was so it's like, my guy,
why are you not farming?

Speaker 1 (42:09):
But no, the call of the turtle is too strong.
He needs he needs to catch it. Thank you. For
the episode Turtle The Call of the Turtle.

Speaker 3 (42:18):
So you you know how some beaches have like a
net around the swimming area so that sharks can't come in.

Speaker 1 (42:24):
Imagine that, but in reverse. That's kind of what they
were going, so it couldn't escape.

Speaker 3 (42:29):
They wanted to corral this turtle with this chicken wire net.
They wanted to corral it into a shallower part of
the pond so they could get a better look at it. Yeah,
and allegedly this group of the termined turtle hunters managed
to do that. They corralled the beast into a section
of Folk Lake that was only about ten feet deep.

Speaker 1 (42:49):
Okay, here's my thing. Cameras exist at this point, yes, okay.

Speaker 3 (42:53):
And the story goes that someone there brought a camera
and filmed this happening. They had a film camera that
they had set up.

Speaker 1 (43:04):
Where is the footage, maw, Where is the footage? Important questions?

Speaker 3 (43:10):
Some people say that the video was lost to time,
like they had it, but it's old and it degradated
and now it's not viewable anymore. Some people say that
the guy who filmed it, who I didn't write down
his name, His name was said, but I didn't write
it down so stupid because apparently he climbed a tree
to get a better angle, and he was like in
the tree with this camera to look down upon these
people catching the turtle. And they said that somebody offered

(43:31):
to buy the film off of him, and he sold
it and then it was never seen again.

Speaker 1 (43:36):
You know. It was the person who bought it was
the turtle in disguise. There was a turtle with a
mustache that he could destroy the evidence that no one
would ever see it aga or in my like pie
in the sky world, I like to imagine that there
is a storage unit somewhere that has these canisters of
giant turtle catching film. What if though, And the thing is,

(43:56):
I do imagine this could be the case. Like we
talk about hypotheticals and like weird conspiracy theories. I think
there's a guy out there in the universe who has
the storage shed somewhere that has just a lot of
stuff that proves bigfoots reel Nessi's reel all this other stuff.
There's a guy out there who's sitting all all.

Speaker 2 (44:12):
This y NeSSI is the only one I will not
believe is real, only because it's specifically to fuck with
the Daily Mail.

Speaker 1 (44:20):
Yeah, there's a guy out there who's got the scoop
and is not letting it out. He's gonna take it
to the grave. He's gonna take it to the grave.

Speaker 3 (44:27):
So we don't know, because apparently a lot of people
say there was film pictures were taken like this was
something that did not go undocumented. However, that documentation allegedly
has since been lost to.

Speaker 1 (44:40):
Time, all right, for one reason or another.

Speaker 3 (44:42):
For one reason or another, however, no mere chicken wire
was ever going to contain this giant turtle from eat it.
So the beast disappeared quickly back into the depths. The
story of the sighting and the almost capture spread very quickly,
and within days had breached the containment of Triobusco. Outside
this town, we're hearing about this big old turtle.

Speaker 1 (45:03):
How big was the town? Do we know?

Speaker 3 (45:04):
I did not write down the statistics.

Speaker 1 (45:06):
It's not a city. It's a town.

Speaker 3 (45:09):
It might be a city now I don't think so. Actually,
I think it's still considered a small town.

Speaker 1 (45:13):
Okay, this is.

Speaker 2 (45:14):
The nineteen forties. We don't necessarily have a whole lot
of SENSEUS data for places that aren't.

Speaker 1 (45:18):
So we're talking about like I think we did. I
think we have it written down, So we're talking about
like maybe a population of like a thousand to nine thousand,
Like I can look up right now the statistics for
sure of us Go, Indiana. I don't know if I'm
saying it wrong, I apologize, but it is a considered
still a town. The population was seventeen hundred and ninety

(45:40):
six people as of the twenty ten census, not even
two thousand people in twenty ten, and if there was
even less of that in nineteen forty nine, Yeah, I
can totally see why it would have spilled out from
the town. I'm surprised to spill out of the town
if it's that small, because normally small town things stay
in the small town. However, what happened, and this is
the speculation, was because this was not terribly long after

(46:03):
the end of World War two and people were really
desperate for some fun, feel good stories. Yeah, and so
if one reporter gets wind of this happening, a bunch
of them were like, I could use can I hear
that story? That's a bit? So I can. That's a
bit that I can write about.

Speaker 3 (46:18):
Yeah, So it's a non depressing bit exactly. A reporter
from Columbus City heard about what had happened and came
down to report for the local newspaper, Nice and a
United Press International reporter from Fort Wayne, which is a
much larger city, they also drove in to hear about this.

Speaker 1 (46:36):
So like the story, like local, big newspapers started hearing
about this, and they all started coming in. And then
as those larger publications are publishing about it, more people
are hearing about it.

Speaker 5 (46:47):
Wow, it spreads very quickly. It's really that dry out
there for the news.

Speaker 1 (46:52):
Yes, okay, the people are very thirsty for this giant turtle.

Speaker 3 (46:57):
So within days, the story about a giant turtle in
a little lake in Indiana was all over the world.
According to a local named Chuck.

Speaker 1 (47:05):
Jones, who was ten at the time, quote, it must
have been a slow newsyar because it went viral, and
that was before viral was used.

Speaker 3 (47:13):
It was all over the country. They had traps and
hooks and they tried everything to find this turtle, and
they actually did find it. It broke out of this net.
They had it on a gaff hook and while they
had it, it started to tip the boat.

Speaker 1 (47:25):
Oh, it sounds like there's multiple sightings of this real turtle.

Speaker 3 (47:29):
Apparently the people who were catching this turtle, they're claiming,
like apparently Chuck Jones said he went and saw and
tried to catch it and was like watching the boat tip.
Like people were claiming they saw this thing. I'm starting
to believe the turtle's real. So one of the newspapers
got turtle. One of the newspapers jokingly dubbed the turtle Oscar,

(47:50):
after the man who had originally sighted it, and the
name stuck.

Speaker 1 (47:55):
Oscar. The turtle, the beast of Busco was the hottest
news in the country. Wonderful opening a newspaper. Oh yes,
more updates on Oscar. Yes, tell me the doings of Oscar.
I don't think anyone in the US sounded like that. Nengland.
That's not really a New England. But if you're just
doing it as a bit, okay, you're just doing it
for fun. Maybe it's after World War two. I need

(48:16):
some whimsy. Okay, this is us in our whimsy being like, yes,
tell me the turtle news. So, of course, not all
of the coverage was positive, and a few reporters were
outright disparaging towards Gail Harris. Sure, I thought you're gonna
say disparaging turtle.

Speaker 4 (48:30):
I was like, as we have we untold story. Oscar
is a drug addict, milkshake duck Oscar. No, they were
saying that Gail was either stupid or lying. Sure, Gail,
in response to this, because.

Speaker 1 (48:44):
They don't know it down, she would, you know what,
that's a fisherman thing to do. That's he is so dedicated.
Fishermen are great, and he was going to catch this
turtle if it was the last thing he did, says
Gail Harris in Deana resident. So over the course of
a week, thousands of people were flooding his property trying
to catch a glimpse of this thing. Meanwhile, Gail was

(49:05):
teaming up with a local mechanic named Kenneth Leitch l
L Eich.

Speaker 3 (49:12):
So maybe Leitch, I'm not sure. Kenneth and the two
of them were trying to build a better turtle trap. Literally,
it started with a sort of periscope that they could
use to look under the water for the beast. So
they built a reverse periscope. So they were sitting in
their boat and they were like trying to scope out
of the water. But it very quickly escalated into Gail

(49:34):
getting his hands on a full diving suit. So again,
this is nineteen forty nine. This is a bell diving
suit with the big metal bell helmet, and.

Speaker 1 (49:46):
Then you have a tube going to the surface for
air to come down. How are they thinking about this
movie with Tommy Lee Jones and Cuba getting Junior about
the diver. I don't know. I'm so sorry, Chelsea. Here
the film one bad it nouns. I'm gonna look it up.
Hang on, It's okay.

Speaker 3 (50:03):
Where they got this suit in the middle of Indiana,
I do not know, but they they got it. Ostensibly
this was to try and find the beast, but I'm
also thinking that maybe it might have been as bait.

Speaker 1 (50:16):
Maybe.

Speaker 3 (50:17):
My favorite news coverage of the event was simply quote,
the Harris family began selling coffee and hot dogs. Diver
Rigsby went down, but the helmet leaked, so he came
back up.

Speaker 1 (50:30):
The search was called off. That's great.

Speaker 3 (50:33):
So they told everybody that this dude, this diver, local
diver Rigsby, was going to go under in this suit
that they got. They were selling hot dogs to all
of the people who were here to watch.

Speaker 5 (50:42):
People are just on the side of the lake, maybe
pond in shares hot.

Speaker 1 (50:46):
Dogs, like you get that water. Missus Harris is like,
do you guys want some coffee ten cents? It's called
Men of Honor, and it was Robert de.

Speaker 3 (50:54):
Niro, okay, And then again the helmet starts leaking, so
they're like, no, we can't continue, this is not safe.

Speaker 1 (51:00):
Boom.

Speaker 3 (51:01):
There was another attempt later from a guy named Walter
Johnson who went down there, but he spent two hours
under the water trying to find this turtle. But he
kept sinking into the mud at the bottom, which apparently
like waste deep on him, so like the muck was
so deep that he kept getting stuck, so he couldn't
get very far.

Speaker 1 (51:19):
And they're like, all right, pull him up. I was
about to say he communed with the turtle. I went
back and was like, there's nothing down. There's no turtle.
There's never been a turtle. Turtles a fake unseals the helmet.
It's a turtle head in there.

Speaker 2 (51:33):
Well, you should know that quote turtles all the way down.
We have a tele quote.

Speaker 1 (51:37):
We understood the quote. We were just goofing off of
the riff.

Speaker 3 (51:40):
Yes, So this kind of wily coyote turtle hunting nonsense
kept going on for weeks.

Speaker 1 (51:45):
Apparently in April, somebody tried to pass off a sea
turtle they had bought as Oscar.

Speaker 3 (51:51):
The Beast, and they claimed that they caught it in
the lake. They're like, I caught the turtle. And then
they revealed a sea turtle and everyone's like, we've seen.

Speaker 1 (51:58):
Sea turtles before. Let those look like, so, where did
you get a sea turtle in aana? I have more questions, now,
why do you have that? But no, they knew what
sea turtles look like, and they were like, no, I
know the difference. That's not a snapping turtle. That's not Oscar.

Speaker 3 (52:18):
So somebody else again went really looney tunes with it,
and they got.

Speaker 1 (52:22):
A female snapping turtle and they tried to use it
to lure Oscar out wonderful, like, ooh, it's a hot
lady snapping turtle. Don't you want to see the hot
single snapping turtle in your area? They don't know if
it's hot. They have no idea, they don't know. Yeah,
Oscar could have been like not up to part. No,
not meeting my standards, not meeting my high stand.

Speaker 3 (52:41):
Like a bigger We don't know that's God, You're so right.
So attempts to lasso, which were almost successful.

Speaker 1 (52:48):
Also, wait, do we even know if Oscar's a boy?

Speaker 3 (52:51):
We resume Oscar's a boy because all get your snapping
turtles do have sexual dimorphism in size.

Speaker 1 (52:56):
The male snapping turtles generally are larger than the female.
Tell me, how do you how do you last on
an oval shaped object? You go for the feet, got it? Okay,
that's how? Or the neck? Ye, the neck is harder
because of the shell. Usually they have like a little
bit of a raised thingy on the shell to.

Speaker 3 (53:11):
Protect the neck, to protect the back of the neck. Yeah,
but the feet, you gotta stick them out to swim,
that's true. So they went for the feet. Helen Harris,
Gale's wife, reported quote, we had got a rope on
one of its hind legs, and we thought maybe we
could gradually go towards the shore and pull it along
with us with this rope, but get it up to
the edge. But the turtle broke the rope. We got

(53:33):
so close to shore, and that's what happened every time.

Speaker 1 (53:36):
Yep.

Speaker 3 (53:36):
And so after that happened, I saw him underwater and
you could see this piece of rope that was about
three feet long, still tied.

Speaker 1 (53:42):
To his back leg, and he was swimming around with
it on, so like he was just trailing around these
ropes from failed attempts to lasso him, trolling them Dan.

Speaker 3 (53:52):
They then tried to build a cage to drop over Oscar,
but apparently they underestimated the size of the turtle, so
the cage wouldn't cover him completely. So they made this cage,
they dropped it on him, but allegedly the cage like
hit part of the shell and then like tipped off
because it could not completely cover him.

Speaker 1 (54:10):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (54:11):
Out of desperation, Gail Harris started using actual dynamite to
try and catch Oscar, which is very funny because very
early in the hunt he was adamant about not hurting
the turtle. In fact, what people claimed, there was one
guy who was a part of the turtle hunting posse
when they were using the chicken wire and he was saying, no,
the turtle didn't break out. Gail was like, Oh, I'm

(54:32):
really worried about it hurting the turtle.

Speaker 1 (54:34):
So I don't want it to because it was like
hitting the chicken wire. So they let the turtle go
so it wouldn't get hurt.

Speaker 3 (54:41):
But now he's so desperate that he's dynamiting the lake.

Speaker 1 (54:45):
Jesus. By September, the turtle frenzy had mostly faded, but
Gail hadn't given up. He decided, gay will never get
What do you think what do you think was the
next step in this? So we've done dynamite, We've done dynamite,
we've done dynamite. What do you think the next step is,
like dynamite is after trying to just shoot it. I
don't well, they didn't want to kill it. Yeah, okay,

(55:05):
I think the dynamite was trying to get it, like
to surface, to try to drain the lake. He tried
to drain the lake. Oh my god. Yeah, he tried
to drain the nine acre lake. I think really hard
about it.

Speaker 3 (55:18):
If there's no water, then there's nowhere for the turtle
to hide. Right, So this guy toes over. He has
his tractor. He tows his tractor over. He has a
sump pump that is connected like running from the engine.

Speaker 1 (55:30):
Of the tractor going to go I don't know, actually
fucking decimating the Local's this form wrecked, right, He hasn't
been farming for over six weeks. Yeah, making money. Excellent question, Chelsea.
From that question in your pocket for later, from the
coffee and hot dogs, obviously obviously.

Speaker 3 (55:53):
So he decides he's going to try and use this
this sump pump in his tractor to.

Speaker 1 (55:58):
Drain Folk Lake.

Speaker 3 (55:59):
And when people heard this, madman was doing this, so
they just started coming back to watch.

Speaker 1 (56:03):
Yeah, I'm gonna course water. Of course you would. This time,
Gail had learned and he started to charge a fee
for people to enter his property. Sure, I mean yeah,
private property he should have from the first place. Yeah,
one percent. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (56:18):
So this was a very smart strategy, considering he had
to buy over two hundred or two thousand gallons of
gas to run the pump. He says, day and night,
the pump ran, dwindling Folk Lake down to a mere
acre of water.

Speaker 1 (56:32):
Oh my god, regardless of your metrics. Definitely upon now,
definitely upon, definitely upon Now, where does eight acres of water?
I don't know where do you put that? Oh my god.

Speaker 3 (56:43):
So crowds of people came out as the water was
drawn away to try and catch a glimpse of Oscar.

Speaker 1 (56:49):
They returned to their various schemes to bait the turtle out.

Speaker 3 (56:54):
On October thirteenth, nineteen forty nine, somebody set out this
trap that had a bunch of live ducks in it.
So this was supposed to be live bait for oscars.
They had it on the surface.

Speaker 1 (57:04):
Dude, turtles eat ducks if they won't.

Speaker 3 (57:08):
They're carnivorous, and presumably a giant turtle would eat whatever
it wants. Sure, so this allegedly worked. A crowd of
two hundred people claimed they watch an enormous snapping turtle
emerge like jaws from the water and try to bite
at the ducks in this cage before disappearing once again

(57:31):
into the lake. There are no photos or film of
this event, but it spurred Gaiale Harris onward and again.

Speaker 1 (57:39):
There's only one acre of water at this point. At
this point, yeah, he is so close. He's gonna get
this man. The way you say that so close tells
me he's not so. The sump pump gave out. Okay,
I mean that happens. Is only an acre left?

Speaker 3 (57:58):
Yes, the muck at the bottom of the lake that
had previously gotten that one diver stuck. It was too thick,
and as the water dwindled, more of that mud was
getting sucked up into the pump. It wrecked the mechanism,
the pump.

Speaker 1 (58:10):
Gave out, and as a latch dish, a last ditch effort,
a crane was brought in to try and dredge the
remainder of Folk Lake. So they had this giant crane
and a net that they were using to scoop through.
Or maybe not a net, but maybe like just the
bottom of it. They were trying to dig up Folk
Lake to no avail. By December of that year they

(58:33):
had found nothing, and then no turtle. They couldn't train
the rest of it because I guess they couldn't get
another some pump in time.

Speaker 3 (58:42):
They tried to dredge it with a crane. No turtle
was spotted since October thirteenth, and then Gale was struck
with appendicitis and was bed ridden for weeks.

Speaker 1 (58:51):
Woh turtle, The turtle gave it to him. The turtle
gave appendice. By the time he was well enough to
continue the search, it was winter and the lake had
been refilled by rain. Uh. Can you imagine eight acres
worth of water in rain? Can you imagine how does
it get in Indiana?

Speaker 3 (59:11):
I mean, I imagine part of it wasn't completely refilled,
but it was refilled enough.

Speaker 1 (59:16):
Right, Yeah, that's like.

Speaker 3 (59:18):
Also because the water is collecting there, naturally you're getting
a lot of runoff from other places, Like there's rivers
that deposit into this area. There's like it's a low
point in the ground. The water, even if you're only
getting a few inches of rain over the whole world or.

Speaker 1 (59:31):
The whole land. I mean to say, it's going to
settle into that pond. Wow, you had a pensiadis you
go back to your like you're like, I got that
one acre. I'm gonna find you. You wrapped, bastard. And
then the lakes full again, the lakes full again. And
at this point he had no money left. He had
spent all of it on various again looney.

Speaker 3 (59:50):
Tunes attempts to catch this turtle and gasoline for the
pump and renting a crane.

Speaker 1 (59:56):
And all of this stuff.

Speaker 3 (59:57):
Jesus, and ultimately the Harris family had to sell the farm.

Speaker 1 (01:00:01):
God damn.

Speaker 3 (01:00:03):
You can imagine the family was pretty bitter about the
whole thing. In the end, Helen, missus Harris, told the
newspaper quote, whoever buys the farm can have the turtle.

Speaker 1 (01:00:13):
If they can get him. Nice.

Speaker 5 (01:00:16):
Yeah, the turtles yours.

Speaker 1 (01:00:18):
I don't care anymore. That lake belongs to the turtle.

Speaker 3 (01:00:23):
So the day in October was the last sighting of
the Beast of Busco. Ever, the in legend he still lives.

Speaker 1 (01:00:32):
To this day.

Speaker 3 (01:00:33):
Turabusco is called Turtle Town Incredible, and there is a
statue of a giant green turtle hanging out in the
city to commemorate the beast.

Speaker 1 (01:00:40):
That's great. Every June there is a Turtle.

Speaker 3 (01:00:43):
Day's Festival Incredible, which which is held in town. It
includes a parade, a carnival, and turtle races. It's actually
possible that if Oscar the turtle was real, he is
still alive.

Speaker 1 (01:00:57):
Turtle time incredibly long time.

Speaker 3 (01:00:59):
Believe they can survive over one hundred years in the wild,
sometimes longer in captivity. However, for a turtle to get
that big, it's presumably already pretty old. Yeah, So like,
we don't know how old Oscar would have been, or
how old he could get.

Speaker 1 (01:01:13):
It's hard to say.

Speaker 3 (01:01:14):
Yeah, some say that Oscar was a hoax the whole time,
and that the Harris family was in on it.

Speaker 1 (01:01:20):
No, if there's two hundred plus people who witnessed a
massive turtle coming up over the water a duck. It
sounds like a turtle was there. Sounds like there was
a big turtle. And if the population now of that
town was like fourteen hundred people, and let's just say
then also is still fourteen hundred people, two hundred of
fourteen hundred people is a large chunk of people. Yeah,
here's my thing. I don't think it was. I think

(01:01:42):
it was probably like at that two fifty mark. You
think it was just a big turtle.

Speaker 3 (01:01:45):
Yeah, which is a lot of people claim that it
was like there was a big turtle.

Speaker 1 (01:01:49):
It just wasn't as big as was being reported. It
could have just been blown out of proportion. Yeah, but
also to that, eyewitnesses do that all the fucking time.
But like, there was a turtle there, I believe Do
you believe in the turtle? There are some stories that
we talk about here. I'm just like, no, that that's
not a crypto, that's real. And this is one of
them where I'm like, no, there was a big turtle.
Was a big turtle? Well, this is one of the

(01:02:10):
ones that is like plausible, yes, because.

Speaker 3 (01:02:12):
They weren't claiming that this was like a supernatural beast.
They were just saying, this was a really big turtle.

Speaker 1 (01:02:16):
Yeah, and it's not like I had weird jaws or
like yeah, like it's not supernatural.

Speaker 3 (01:02:20):
It's just yeah, it's just a big turtle that is
unnaturally large. However, again, that could have been an exaggeration, yeah,
or a misjudgment.

Speaker 1 (01:02:30):
There is one guy.

Speaker 3 (01:02:31):
Who is named Oe Jones. He's the one that Gaila
actually bought the farm from, and he claimed multiple times
that Oscar was actually his black angus cow just swimming around.

Speaker 1 (01:02:40):
Okay, he was like, yeah, that it was just my cow.
Cows don't stay under water for that long. No, no,
they don't. Cow's also try to eat ducks. Cows are
not carnivores that we know of. Yes.

Speaker 3 (01:02:53):
So in twenty twenty one, forty three anchors of acres
of land, including Folk Lake, was up for sale for
a million dollars.

Speaker 1 (01:03:02):
It was being sold by this company that primarily sells
hunt private hunting grounds. Uh so that's what the focus
of it was, Like, Oh, it's all of this like
woods that you can hunt in, but it includes Folk Lake.
I will say because we were having the conversation early
downstairs and I don't want to give too much details
because I want this property. But there is a property
in California that is five acres that is going for
half a million. So when you think about forty three

(01:03:24):
acres going for one million dollars, that's a steal. That's Indiana.
But it's Indiana. Yeah, it's Indiana. It's all of Indiana.
It's the whole state. No whole state now, no, no, no, no.

Speaker 3 (01:03:35):
I could not find presumably is it's not for sale
any longer as far as I could tell, So presumably
it has sold. I could not find information for who,
but somebody owns the land, and somebody could try again
to find because some people, even if they believe that
Oscar has since passed, they're like, there is the body
of a giant turtle in that lake.

Speaker 1 (01:03:55):
Where does a shell go? It has to be in
They might still potentially be there. I mean, I think
that every time they do the Turtle festival, everyone should
go to the lake. Everyone should be diving in the
lake trying to find Austin. She feels like it should
be a part of the festival. I think so too.
Oh I didn't write it down though. A reason why
that might not be a good idea.

Speaker 3 (01:04:12):
I didn't write this down, but there was an incident
when they were draining the lake because as the lake
bed was like dried up, it was opening a bunch
of like terrain around it that was usually unaccessible. And
there was a reporter who was covering it who fell
into a pit and almost died. So like, there's reasons
why maybe not a lot of people should be crowding

(01:04:32):
into this area. Yeah, Like the dive diving is risky
in all instances. Usually you need to be specially trained
in order to do it for a prolonged period of time.

Speaker 1 (01:04:42):
Should be, should be?

Speaker 3 (01:04:45):
I don't know if these dudes had diving licenses or
if they were just like they had a will and
a dream back then yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:04:52):
But honestly though, I don't think you need a license.
Sit on the edge of that lake, maybe pond with
a hot dog with hot dog and coffee, and be like, yeah,
you go get him, you get that turtle, get you
show us that turtle. Don't kill him, but show I
want to see him. I want to listen.

Speaker 2 (01:05:06):
Honestly, local communities need to come together to make sure
that they're public schools and public libraries continue to be funded.

Speaker 1 (01:05:12):
Throughout the world in which we live in now, and
it's not a bad idea for some of that funding
to come from possible cryptid sided.

Speaker 3 (01:05:20):
Maybe a cryptid Maybe we have a Turtle Days festival
where we have our little parade and everybody has turtle racing.

Speaker 1 (01:05:27):
We want to go too. Sounds fine, I want to go.
I want to watch turtles race at Turtletown. Yeah, I
t I love that's I want to pick a turtle
and like deck myself out uting for that turtle. He've got.
It's uma musume version. But turtles you got like the horse.
That's the horse game. Okay, that's just like yo, go

(01:05:49):
turtle turtle. Yeah, no, I am here for it. That
is the story of the best of Busco.

Speaker 3 (01:05:54):
It has not been sent since October seene since October thirteenth,
nineteen forty nine.

Speaker 1 (01:05:59):
I think you know again. I think a turtle was there.
Whether what its size was I cannot say, but there
was a large turtle there. I think what happened is
the lake started to drain. He was losing food because
he saw the ducks, tried to go for it, and
then the guy gets appendicitis. He gets pendicitis, the lake
is still one acre and it starts to rain. I

(01:06:19):
think Oscar made a break for it. He could have.
I think, because again, either Oscar made a break for
it or Oscar died from the draining of the fucking lake.
And because he said that the at the bottom it's
like all like people got stuck in it. People got
stuck turtles. I don't think it's stuck in that. Well.
There was a guy not to be a bummer about it,
but there was a guy who claimed that it's very
possible if he was actually that large, as the amount

(01:06:42):
of water in the pond was decreasing, he wouldn't have
been able to support his own weight outside of the water. Yeah,
and could have gotten stuck in the muck and then died.
That is that is possible. That is a speculation, human suck. However,
we'll never know. I think he made a break for it.
He might have. I think he was I think he survived.

(01:07:03):
I think I think he's out there, not in that lake.
He's just out there and descendants are out there. They
could be I mean, big turtle like that. He himself,
all the all the ladies in Oscar admits he likes
big women turtles, I'm sure he sired some some some
some generations.

Speaker 3 (01:07:22):
Yeah, but that is the story of the Beast of Busco.

Speaker 1 (01:07:26):
Thank you. So that was coot.

Speaker 3 (01:07:27):
That was incredible that I because the Wikipedia page about
it is very short. And then as I was getting
into the lore about like the attempts that this one
man made, that Gail Harris farmer, Gail Harris went so
hard trying to prove that this turtle was real and
to catch it, and I was like, I need to
know everything about this to have been there when it happened,

(01:07:48):
I would have been camped out too, hot Dogs.

Speaker 1 (01:07:51):
Yeah. And even after the event, like we failed, the
guy came back up to the surface because his helmet
was leaking, I would have been like, you know, hot Dogs, like, well,
what's happen tomorrow? What's what about? What are you gonna
do next?

Speaker 5 (01:08:02):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:08:02):
Yeah, I'm here. No, I would have been so in it. Yeah.
And I think that's fair. We need more, We need
more whimsy in our lives. We do. I think that's
the takeaway. Yeah, don't harass wild animals like we make
all these goofs. Do not harass wild animal. They'll harass
you back. They will, or you could hurt them, or
they don't try to drain a lake. Don't drain a
lake just to find a turtle. I think about so

(01:08:23):
num smart, that's so like it financially ruined this family. Yeah,
that's funny, though it is. I need to know the
other eight acres of water. When if I die not
knowing that, I'll be sad.

Speaker 3 (01:08:34):
I feel like they just drained it somewhere else, Like
they just put it into the field or wherever, like
they had to be flooding somewhere else. Right, Yeah, and again, yeah,
there was all of this was not smart, no, no,
but god, it was entertaining.

Speaker 2 (01:08:50):
It reminds me of there's this there's this movie from
like the nineteen fifties. I want to say I watched
it when I was in school.

Speaker 1 (01:09:00):
Was it Kirk Douglas that was the lead.

Speaker 2 (01:09:02):
I'm looking this up as I as I talk about it,
but basically there was. It's about this guy who, uh,
he's a reporter and he doesn't have like a good
story Ace in the Hole. So it was nineteen fifty one.
He's working for an Albuquerque newspaper and he ends up
exploiting a story about a trading post owner who got

(01:09:22):
trapped in a cave and like they could have easily
saved him, but Kirk Douglas's character Chuck wanted to like
drag it out so that he could have a good story.
So like the whole process of saving this man from
the cave like and making it like a big thing, uh,
ends up being this man's death with all of these
spectators watching.

Speaker 3 (01:09:44):
It's a very good movie, right, But it's the same
thing where it's like the sensationalism kind of is to
the detriment of everyone involved.

Speaker 1 (01:09:53):
Yeah, yep, man, but that's the Beast of Usco. You
if you were Indiana.

Speaker 3 (01:09:58):
In Indiana, you should go and go to Turtle Days
and tell us how it is.

Speaker 1 (01:10:02):
If you've been to Turtle Days. Yeah, if you know
about you and you're like I've been, and let me
tell you. Please. I want to know everything. I want
to know so many things about this. But that's all
I got for today. I hope that this story delighted you.
It did as it did me. This is the story
I'm going to take with me for the rest of
my life. Excellent. Yeah, the Beast of Busco. I'm very
happy that the old Turtle.

Speaker 3 (01:10:25):
We are going to move on now to the final
section of our podcast. But first we're going to have
another word from our sponsors.

Speaker 1 (01:10:39):
So let's start with Blue Sky Blue Sky mouse wander says,
hark witness my brothers cats, Ted and Marshall.

Speaker 2 (01:10:46):
They are extremely good, sweet fluffy boys. There are more
pictures of Ted because taking a picture of Marshall would
force me to pet him with only one hand at
a time, and this was unacceptable.

Speaker 5 (01:10:55):
I feel like the phrase hark hear is great for
my cates.

Speaker 1 (01:11:01):
He want a big fluffy black cat. This is for
mal who does not have it. This is Ted ruffy.
Here's both of them together, the pictures upside down. He
was sent to us upside down, and he was sent
up was said to as upsound. This is Marshall. Great cats,
Thank you so much their deifle. We also have from

(01:11:23):
East the Fox a screenshot from Tumblr that is from
originally turtle painted Mmm topical, who says, this morning, I
had the totally random and completely unsolicited realization that Ganghis
Khan has the same number of syllables as Stacy's mom.
And if I had to be cursed with this knowledge,
then so do you.

Speaker 2 (01:11:44):
This is funny because I've had that actual songs stuck
in my head for so long, which if you don't
know this song, gangh Is Khan, it's great.

Speaker 1 (01:11:51):
I love that song. So then what you're saying is
that the reverse is also true, and you could replace
Ganghis Khan in that song with Stacy's mom. Get a
little bit Stacy's mom. Yeah it works.

Speaker 2 (01:12:03):
Uh caked him off Man says, have you heard about
Quain Mills? He writes smutbooks, often going into the supernatural genre. However,
apparently he also uses the erotica to talk about systemic discrimination, racism,
and poverty.

Speaker 1 (01:12:17):
I recommend one of his books for Parlor of the Paranormal.
I love that. I love how weird fiction is often
used to discuss very intense topics. It's great, It's so good. Yeah,
it delights me to no. When American Rando says, all
I know is I don't want to stop. All fired up.

Speaker 3 (01:12:34):
I'm gonna go till I drop. You're either in or
in the way, don't make me.

Speaker 1 (01:12:38):
I don't want to stop.

Speaker 2 (01:12:40):
Ozzy rip blank Space is eighty four then asks why
can't we have nice things?

Speaker 1 (01:12:44):
Mood?

Speaker 3 (01:12:46):
Why can't we Yeah mood, but that's all we have?
For the Blue Sky Chelsea, would you be so kind
as to read me an email?

Speaker 1 (01:12:52):
I would love to read you an email. Yay, Kenghis come.
It's good God, Oh my god, he's all of life.
So all right, I've got one from Jessica. Whoo, and
it's reptiles versus amphibians. Oh, this will be helpful for
the discussion we were literally just having. It's true. It's

(01:13:13):
like it's like Jessica heard us. It's like this is
from march Man. We had this conversation already. It's what
that tells.

Speaker 2 (01:13:20):
Yeah, Hello ladies, Malan furry pals. I'm very behind on podcasts,
so I imagine a ton of people have already emailed
or blue skied at you in regards to amphibians versus reptiles.

Speaker 1 (01:13:28):
Maybe, but we don't enough clearly enough word to stick,
not enough word to stick.

Speaker 2 (01:13:35):
But you did specifically request clarification, and as the resident
Bummersville geneticists whose degree in technolo is technically in zoology,
I am here to help, and.

Speaker 1 (01:13:43):
I've said there would be someone out there, Thank god.
I just didn't think it comes so immediate.

Speaker 5 (01:13:47):
You're a hero.

Speaker 2 (01:13:48):
Yeah, Please feel free to disregard if this is the
thousandth email you've gotten about this, even if it is no, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:13:54):
We need give it all. This give us all the
infl We clearly need it.

Speaker 2 (01:13:58):
I think there's some confusion between the class of organism
of amphibians and the object adjective amphibious Amphibians. The animals
are so named because they begin their lives as aquatic
and then become terrestrial or semi terrestrial animals, but some
other animals, including reptiles and even mammals hello hippos, are
amphibious in that they spend part of their time in

(01:14:18):
water and some out of it. Amphibians all go through
the same sort of metamorphosis which they where they start
as eggs hatches aquatic tadpoles with gills and no limbs,
and develop into adults, usually by growing limbs and losing
gills and tails. In the case of frogs and toads.
In answer to how toads could be amphibious given some
of them live in deserts, desert toads are adapted to
limited water and will spawn during a rare rainstorm and

(01:14:41):
have a very short tadpole phase, becoming adults before the
puddles dry up. Or toads find a small, more permanent
water source to spawn in.

Speaker 1 (01:14:49):
That's fascinating.

Speaker 2 (01:14:50):
The adults, like all desert animals, have extensive adaptations to
retain water.

Speaker 1 (01:14:54):
Right, Yes, that makes evolutionarily, that makes complete sense.

Speaker 2 (01:14:57):
The most famous amphibians are frogs, toads, and salamanders. Casalians
never grow legs and are long critters that often get
mistaken for snakes. In general, reptiles and amphibians often get
lumped together, especially salamanders and lizards, but they have some
distinct differences. The principal difference is that reptiles do not
go through metamorphosis. A baby snake or a lizard looks
more or less like a tiny version of the adults,

(01:15:19):
whereas a tadpole is a widely different creature from the
adult frog slash, toad slash salamander. Also, amphibians have smooth skin,
while reptiles have scales. Geckos are indeed reptiles, So apparently
this was the conversation we were having.

Speaker 1 (01:15:31):
Probably probably they are.

Speaker 2 (01:15:33):
A kind of lizard, but they look very similar to
salamanders and fun bonus facts. Some species of salamander, including
the axe lottle, never fully mature which is why they
stay aquatic all their lives.

Speaker 1 (01:15:43):
Yes, a axi.

Speaker 2 (01:15:44):
Lottle goes through metamorphosis by growing limbs, but never loses
the skills. Ax Lottels have incredible regenerative abilities and that
is why the professor I worked with to get my
master's degree with studying them. One of my tasks was
to take care of them, and I loved it. I
would love to have one as a pet, but they
are high maintenance in terms of injury, they are wolverine
in terms of water conditions. They are fragile, delicate flowers.

(01:16:07):
Since I have no pet axe lottel and enjoy my
cats refusing to take turns sitting on me. Signed Jessica
aka brown Thumb having scientists over on Blue Sky.

Speaker 1 (01:16:16):
Thank you so much for letting us know more. And
also listener. If you heard that and you're like, wonderful
the hosts now know about reptiles, the answer is no,
send us more, send photos of your weird dogs. This
is these are the cats. They're very good cats. Yeah,
I want to learn more of I actually I owned
reptiles growing up.

Speaker 2 (01:16:36):
I have I had a snake, and then I had
a Chinese water dragon and I had.

Speaker 1 (01:16:41):
A corn snake as well. Get reptiles. I want to say,
and this is a blank statement for me who does
not have a college education anyway, shape or form, I
feel like all reptiles are high maintenance. And I say
that only because I say that because managing a tank
and managing their food like they're relying on you entirely.

Speaker 2 (01:16:58):
Oh, for sure, reptiles are very high maintenance. But they
like mark at them as like starter pets for kids,
and they are not. Do not get your child a
fucking snake as a starter pet.

Speaker 1 (01:17:10):
What's actually a very interesting thing.

Speaker 3 (01:17:12):
One of the theories about Oscar the Beast is that
he was originally released into the lake as a traveling turtle.
Salesman was trying to get rid of him because alligator
snapping turtles are not like impossible in that area, but
they are rare. Yeah, so they do live in northern Indiana,
but having one in a pond like that, in a

(01:17:34):
lake like that is uncommon.

Speaker 1 (01:17:36):
So people do think that there was like a traveling turtles.

Speaker 2 (01:17:38):
Problem is people get like fish or lizards or snakes
and they're like, I don't want this anymore. I'm just
going to release it into the wild and I'm like, motherfucker.

Speaker 1 (01:17:46):
That thing died. Probably that thing absolutely died, as is
the case in Florida. Became a big problem. I love
that became a very invasive problem. Not the BoA's right,
the constrictors. Yeah, the pythons. Isn't there there's a bird
I'm thinking of that. The exact same thing happened. I'm trying.

Speaker 2 (01:18:07):
After Harry Potter was released, like the books and then
the movies, there was a huge problem with snowy owls
in England because people were buying them as pets because
of Harry Potter and then not wanting to deal with
them and then fucking releasing them.

Speaker 1 (01:18:20):
Oh geez, yeah, people cut that out. Yeah, let nature
be nature. There is also a whole thing where like
people were adopting Dalmatians after one hundred wan and Dalmatians
and hey, Dalmatians real fucking difficult breed. They are not
an easy breed of getting animals based off of media
you watch, but that is very vital information about the
difference between pyle samphibians. I appreciate it. We appreciate it.

(01:18:43):
And also tell us more, Yeah, tell us more about
the oxal models. I love Max loddles. I'm so sad
that they're legal in California. They are They're illegal to
own in California. Oh I thought you said you said
they are legal. They aren't. They are illegal, so are ferrets.
But I still had friends I had farah, Well, don't
help them to the fishing game. I mean this was
fifteen years ago, all right. Well, also, if you listener

(01:19:07):
are a fisherman and or who liked to fish, and
you can confirm for us that sometimes you just have
to go hard in the paint. Yeah, let us know.
Tell us what you would do upon seeing a giant turtle?
Would you continue to fish? Yeah? I need to know
because it sounds like everybody in the story. I was like, oh,
that could kill me anyway.

Speaker 2 (01:19:24):
Any Once when I was seven, caught a fish and
was sad that I killed it.

Speaker 1 (01:19:27):
So like, I'm not. I want to know more from
people who actually are fishing. I've gone fishing twice. Once
was deep sea fishing. I was seasick doing the deep
sea fishing, but fishing is fun. The fuck did you
go deep sea fishing? I went with my mom, dad,
and brother. Oh okay, it was it was while we
while we were together actually it was I think twenty eighteen,

(01:19:48):
twenty nineteen. We took a family trip up to San
Francisco and there was a boat obviously very tourism, yeah,
that went out from the pier deep way out from that.
We couldn't even see the city from where we were
at that point, and it was an all day deep
sea fishing thing. I don't remember this. There was this
big chart that was like, if you have this fish
big picture on your line, cut your line because some

(01:20:10):
are legal to catch, some are legal to catch, And
so every time we would catch something while we're reeling it,
we had to say I have something, so someone and
intended on the boat would be next to you to
see what you pull up to then immediately snap your line. Dang.
It was like very sicky to catch anything. I did
all of them, though, because the deep sea fishing wasn't
necessarily to keep. Some people were allowed to you to

(01:20:31):
pay extra. I didn't want to keep any I just
wanted to catch for the experience. Yeah, so I catched
and released everything I got. I only caught like like
three or four fish because again I was very sick.
Alex apparently did very well though.

Speaker 3 (01:20:44):
Okay, have you guys heard about that dude who's funnel
enough catfishing people on dating apps for their fishing spots.

Speaker 1 (01:20:50):
Incredible.

Speaker 3 (01:20:51):
He is He is pretending to be a female fishing
enthusiast on dating apps to get people to tell him
their secret fishing spots.

Speaker 1 (01:21:01):
Love that.

Speaker 3 (01:21:01):
And he's got a series about that on TikTok and
I love it very much because he then goes to
review the fishing spots talk about whether it's actually good
or not.

Speaker 1 (01:21:09):
I'd be really funny if, like in the review video,
it's like, and that's Bob. I tricked him, And this
is the guy that I tricked into telling me his
secret fishing spots. That's so funny. I want a rom
com based off of this presence. But then they actually
fall in love. Yeah, love that based off this premise
is what I meant to say. I understood what you mean.

Speaker 3 (01:21:26):
But anyway, listener, if you know anything more about the
topics that we have discussed today, If.

Speaker 1 (01:21:30):
You're from Indiana and you've been to the.

Speaker 3 (01:21:32):
Turtle Tay celebration, yes, if you know more about inphibians
that you think we should know about reptiles, same thing.
If you are a fisherman and you have thoughts and feelings.
If you want to tell us your detailed plans about
how you would capture a giant snapping.

Speaker 1 (01:21:46):
Turtle, that's interesting.

Speaker 3 (01:21:47):
Yeah, I t tell us everything, tell us whatever, everything.

Speaker 1 (01:21:50):
Feel free to email us at cult Scripted Conspiracies at
gmail dot com. Alternatively, you can go to our social
medias to contact us, like the Blue Sky at C
three podcast. We also have a Patreon Patreon dot com.
Slash could script It's Conspiracies.

Speaker 3 (01:22:04):
Or if all else fails, you can go directly to
our website where we have everything linked for convenience, and
there's also a communication page on there too, which.

Speaker 1 (01:22:11):
Is cult script Its Conspiracies dot com.

Speaker 3 (01:22:14):
Or you could go out to the local lake near
you first determine if it's a laker upond Yeah, very important,
very important with the locals.

Speaker 1 (01:22:22):
Say the locals, ask what they think, yes, figure out
the answer to that question, let us know, and then
go out there, just like on.

Speaker 3 (01:22:29):
Your boat, you know, don't experience it. Find if there's
anything weird in there. You see a giant turtle, tell
us about.

Speaker 1 (01:22:34):
It, tell us about it. Yeah, yeah, don't mess with it,
but yeah, don't capture it. Take pictures yeah, to actually
keep evidence. Yeah, let's here now.

Speaker 4 (01:22:43):
Don't sell it no matter what they offer, don't sell
the film.

Speaker 1 (01:22:47):
Well sell it and still have a copy now because
you want to have you for your own record. We
won't pay you. You can give us the evidence and
we'll keep it safe for you. Yeah, yeah, Louisen. If
you don't want us to tell anybody about it, we won't,
but we do want to know. We'll tell us about
your secret fishing spots to This is a whole point,
the whole episode. It's been a very long con Thank

(01:23:09):
you so.

Speaker 3 (01:23:10):
Much, Christina, You're welcome, Mal, and thank you listeners for
having us along with you on this journey of life.

Speaker 5 (01:23:15):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (01:23:16):
And we'll be back next week with another topic from Chelsea.
This time you already have my topic. I've already started
researching it. She's so prepared, so interesting. It is a
bit of a bummer though. Well, we'll be ready for
that next week. Yes, goodbye Chelsea, Bye Christina, Bye Mal.
I can still hear his voice. Bye ladies,