Listener Mail: The Squirrel Is Not Enough

To follow up our two-part look at the secret, bloody life of the common squirrel, Robert Lamb and Joe McCormick present an entire listener mail episode devoted to your field reports on skuggs. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuffworks
dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And boy,
we got a treat for you today. It is time
to jump into a listener Maile episode purely about squirrels.

(00:24):
That's right. We put out the two parter right about
squirrels and they're they're they're bloody secrets and the mystery
surrounding them and some of the the folkloric ideas that
have risen up around them, and uh and what the
science actually has to say. I like how you were like, oh,
a two parter, right, as if you don't remember, and
as if you haven't been thinking about squirrels in those

(00:45):
two episodes every day since then. It's It's true. In
my own house, it's been quite a squirrel odyssey since
those episodes came out, because, uh the first episode I
had my family listened to, and I think I I
mentioned how we were watching a lot of squirrel activity
at our bird feeders, and uh so a few different
things occurred. So for starters, I was talking about about

(01:08):
the scugs and was referring to the squirrels uh as
an entire species as skugs. Yes, And in doing so
I managed to get the words scug kind of like
partially banned from my household. Well, me and my son
were using it, and my wife she was like, I
don't know this. This doesn't sound like a friendly term

(01:30):
to use for squirrels, and and and you eventually convinced me.
I still think of them as scugs, but I I
catch myself and uh, and find myself referring to them
as squirrels more often. So that term comes from we
started using it in the episode because of that letter,
but from Benjamin Franklin, uh, describing the squirrel, his pet squirrel, Mungo.

(01:52):
I think that got killed by a dog, and he
referred to squirrels in the letter as scugs. I think
with if I'd stand the reasoning correctly, it seems to
be that Franklin thought skug was like a common name
applied to pet squirrels, the same way you might look
at a bunch of dogs and say, look at all

(02:12):
those rovers. Yeah. Yeah, so really we're we're It's like
we've taken it upon ourselves, and our listeners have taken
upon themselves themselves. Too to rebrand squirrels as skugs and
uh And I guess part of it too for me
is like realizing, like, Okay, this first grader, do I
really want to to have him grow up and be
the sort of person who refers to squirrels as scugs

(02:34):
and nobody around him knows what he's talking about. I
think people will know because of us. Possibly. Yeah. I
also have found that in response to those episodes, I've
actually grown um more affectionate for the squirrels that feeded
our bird feeder. I've I've made sure to put out
water for them a lot because the bird fountain we have,

(02:54):
the birds don't really mess with it all that much,
but the squirrels will delicately, uh like lower themselves down
to it and drink water from it. And it's so
delightful to watch because you know, normally squirrels are just
scurrying about, fighting with each other, you know, looking up
for for predators, and they're just constant motion. But when
they drink the water, there's something uh something precious about them.

(03:18):
You appreciate them more because you know more about the
violence and the predation and all that. Because it's because
you can see the shadow. Now. Yeah, it's like when
you when you see somebody's dark side. Uh, it's the
anti hero effect in the movies, you know, where you
suddenly by seeing the dark side, you actually care more
about them. I should also say that our bird feed
are eventually attracted a rat and I got to see

(03:41):
or I got to It's not not like it's a
special treat. But I witnessed a scuffle between a squirrel
and a rat. Who won, Oh the squirrel. The squirrel
drove the rat away, And I think part of that
just comes down to like squirrel nature versus rat nature.
Like the rat is gonna obviously gonna be A'm not
have to find it with me. I'll come back and
eat it during the night, and the squirrel. But the

(04:02):
squirrel is more like, no, I'm eating this now, you
will go away from me. So you didn't put them
in a box and make them fight like that guy
who wrote into Jama No, no, no no. I think
we're still what what is cannon? Now? Are we saying cannon?
Is that that didn't actually happen, and that was some
fourteen year old making things up. I want to believe that,

(04:22):
but who knows. Okay, Well, maybe we should get right
into some of your excellent, wonderful messages about squirrels. Robert,
would you like to read us this email from Diane
to start us off here? All right, let's do it. Well, first,
let's call the robot over here. I forgot Carney. Carney
just covered in squirrels. All right, here we go, Diane writes, Hi,

(04:45):
Robert and Joe, I just finished listening to The Bloody
Beasts Part one. You're a very interesting discussion about squirrels
that have been observed displaying carnivorous behavior. It brought to
mind an incident I witnessed in the summer of two
thousand four. I was on an archaeological excavation in the
Orkney Islands and Archipelago between Scotland and Norway. At the moment,

(05:06):
I can't recall which island my fellow archaeologist and I
were on, but I think it was Papa Westry. As
we were walking up a hill looking towards the sea,
we saw a sheep nibbling on the flipper of a
dead seal. What they washed up on the shore a
bit odd, I grant you, but animals that live in
environments that offer minimal resources such as many of the

(05:27):
islands that make up the Orkneys, will find ways to
supplement whatever their diet is lacking. I'm certain the sheep
will never adapt to actually heading out to sea to
hunt for a seal meal, but they have no qualms
about eating those unfortunate enough to have died of other causes.
I'm not sure what the meat eating squirrels are compensating for,
but I look forward to hearing a part two. Thank

(05:47):
you for consistently informative and entertaining shows, Dr Diane, And
then she includes her last name, which we tend to
edit out of the show, but I include that just
because she's a doctor. It's worth noting. Yeah, I love
the story about the opportunistic carnivory of of sheep, but
it doesn't make me wonder. Okay, so we believe that
whales came from a former terrestrial tetrapod mammal that slowly

(06:13):
over time adapted itself to a more and more aquatic
lifestyle until until they just became fully water dwelling organisms.
Could sheep do the same thing? And what would the
cetacean equivalence of future sheep descendants be. What also makes
me think back to our episode on on Cambrian life
forms and getting into the idea of essentially the invention

(06:36):
of predation. The the and that I put invention in
quotation marks here because obviously simple organisms are not consciously
inventing anything, but a trend emerges where one organism is
simply consuming another. Yeah, and this is a hypothesis about
what caused what's known as the Cambrian explosion. And there

(06:58):
are some people who I think dispute to what extent
it actually should be considered an explosion or not. But basically,
during the Cambrian period, about five million years ago, we
suddenly see this proliferation speciation events, many different animal body
forms arising from previously out of you know, not much.
So where does all of this sudden animal diversity come from?

(07:19):
One hypothesis is, well, it was the introduction of predation
that suddenly set off these evolutionary arms races and drove
animals to evolve defenses in the different kinds of defenses
they evolved, or predation tactics they evolved, Uh, gave rise
to all this diversity of life. Hey, and speaking of
Cambrian life forms, our store has a new T shirt

(07:41):
slash sticker slash wherever you want to put this image. Uh,
it's our logo. Uh. You know that abstract symbol that
we have surrounded by Cambrian life forms in some agency. Robert,
I love your dedication to plugging merch and that that
is right. Remember that we've got merch. If you've got
money and you want to spend it on some of
our org go go merch up, go to our store.

(08:02):
It's fun stuff. We wouldn't but we would not have
it in the store if if we didn't think it
was fun. Okay, here's another message we got. This one
is from our listener, Victoria. Victoria rights, Hi, Robert and Joe.
One of my first jobs, about fifteen years ago, was
as an animal care attendant at the Toronto Wildlife Center,
a nonprofit organization that treats and rehabilitates sick and injured wildlife.

(08:24):
I learned a healthy fear of squirrels while I was there.
Whenever we were handling squirrels, we would wear thick leather gloves,
often layered over chain mail gloves. I once got bit
through the gloves. Thankfully, they did their job pretty well,
but I could still sometimes feel the bite years later,
I wasn't there for this particular incident, and so my
second hand memory of the story may be exaggerated, but

(08:46):
I don't think so. But I remember a story of
a time when a sparrow got loose in the room
where the squirrels cages were. The staff member working in
their grabbed a net to recapture the loose bird, but
before they were able to catch the fugitive, it landed
on the outside of a squirrel cage. The squirrel inside
managed to grab the sparrow through the cage bars and

(09:07):
eat its face. Another interesting observation about unexpected carnivores from
that job. At one point we noticed that all of
the edmun staff at the organization were vegetarian or vegan,
while all of the animal care staff were meat eaters.
The prevailing theory is that when you work closely with
the animals, you realize that they'd eat you if they

(09:29):
had a chance, so you don't feel bad about eating
their brethren. Looking forward to your next episode, Victoria, well
that's a wonderful story. I mean, it does also make
me think back to some of the the differences between
wild squirrels and squirrels and captivity. So conceivably, and I'm
kind of reading into I have no idea how long
these squirrels had been in uh, in their cages, but

(09:50):
if they had been deprived of any you know, natural
ways to take in certain nutrients, they may have been
essentially starved for them. So of wish you would talk
into a bird face that is so metal it ate
the bird's face. Well, you know, we're attached to faces
as as humans, but we have to kind of strip

(10:11):
away our our our human complications here and realize the
face is delicious. Yeah, yeah, all right, here's another one.
This one comes to us from Nathan. Nathan writes and says,
love the show, guys, keep up the great work. I'm
a local pharmacist here in Atlanta and had to show
you the squirrel video I took at my house in
Grant Park. My favorite episodes are the Squirrel double part

(10:33):
and the two thousand one episode. Also really like the
salamander interview. Since I'm a biology lover, uh, feel free
to hit me up if you have any drug questions.
Thanks Nate. And then Nate attaches a video that appears
to be a squirrel going to town on a barbecue
rib bone. Now one thing that's true. I think there
was a blog for a while that was just like
Bones of Atlanta that was like just images discarded bones

(10:57):
of discarded barbecue bones on the sidewalk. So I mean,
there's good barbecue restaurants here, so people often will walk
around with a clamshell full of barbecue and just throw
the bones down. Well, let's see Grant Park. Which which
barbecue restaurant would it have been? I don't know, but
uh no, I don't know the answer. But they're they're like,
there's barbecue restaurants near you know, my walking the dog

(11:19):
can sometimes be perilous because like there's just barbecue rib
bones and chicken bones and stuff like that hanging out.
And this appears to be a video of a squirrel
that got its hands on a rib bone and it's
just gnawing like there's no tomorrow. This is This reminds
me again of what we're talking about with squirrels eating
the flesh of road kill and the artificial, uh nature

(11:39):
of that situation. This is a very This is a
similar situation like due to human civilization, we not only
have dead animals killed in the road, we also have
lots of roadside bones with flesh still hanging off the
bone and some delicious you know, red sauce as well. Okay,
next message. This is actually one of a genre of
messages that we got from listeners who wanted to correct

(12:02):
something I said. So I said, uh, squirrels are now
found pretty much everywhere except Antarctica. And some of our
New Zealander listeners disagreed, they said. For example, Liam writes
in saying I love your show so much and all
the shows on the How Stuff Works Network, but I
absolutely had to let you know that there are no
squirrels here in little old New Zealand, and I myself

(12:23):
have never seen one. So jealous you see them every day.
Keep up the great work, and thanks for giving me
great podcast to fall asleep to every night. I hope
you did not fall asleep during the squirrel Castration myth episode. Uh,
because man, what kind of dreams would that produce? Oh?
Now here's a question for everybody. If there are no
squirrels in New Zealand, that also means there are no

(12:45):
squirrels in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings and Hobbit movie.
Oh no, but I'm trying to think back. I recently
reread The Hobbit with my son. I can't remember if
Tolkien ever mentioned squirrels, Like there are a lot of
scenes of you know, our characters traveling through woodland areas.
I'm thinking surely he mentioned squirrels at some point or another.

(13:06):
Surely he did. I'd love to hear from anyone out
there who can who can answer that question for me?
And if there are no, then what does that mean
for those movies? Don't we need to go back in
like the next big wave of c g I that
is applied to those films that've got to add some
c g I squirrels to make it right. What is
the Elfish word for squirrel? Scooky doo or something. Probably

(13:29):
school Doc should take a break, Robert, let's do. Let's
take a quick break, and we'll come back with more
squirrel emails. That's all this episode is going to be. Alright,
We're back, Okay. We got an amazing message, a couple
of messages from our listener Bevy uh Betty. Betty really

(13:50):
brought it. So she writes, Hi, guys, I'm writing with
some thoughts about your episode on squirrels. However, let me
start off by saying I'm a huge fan of your show.
I listened to an absolutely adore a whole bunch of
pod casts in the house stuff Works family, but you
guys are definitely one of my faves. All thank you.
That's some high praise because the house stuff Works network
has so many wonderful shows. Well, thank you, Betty, Betty Rights.
I volunteer at a wildlife shelter for about eight hours

(14:13):
a week and right now in the Pacific Northwest at least,
it is the height of baby season for Eastern gray
and Douglas squirrels. In fact, now that our baby possums
are all grown up, our nursery is currently exclusively filled
with baby squirrels and one chip month, most of the
babies ended up with us because they were orphaned, though
in some unfortunate cases they were brought in by well

(14:34):
meaning folks who didn't realize the parents were likely just
off gathering food. Yeah, this is a common Uh. This
is a common thing that comes up with with wildlife
rescue groups. Is that a lot of times you people
think they're doing the right thing by bringing the animal in,
while in reality they should have perhaps just waited for
the the the parent to to do its thing. Yeah,

(14:54):
so I guess don't do that. Uh so. Picking up
with Betty's message, I have some theory about why squirrels
are sometimes mistakenly thought to be castrated, although the fact
that their testicles only descenduring mating season is probably a
larger factor in the myth than what's contained in my hypotheses. However,
the following may help outline some contributing factors that can

(15:15):
help explain why some hunters claim to have observed fresh
castration wounds on juvenile males. Basically, I have four ideas,
which are as follows man four ideas about squirrel castration.
This is rich number one, at least in juveniles. The
anuses of both sexes don't really look like anuses. Instead,
they look like small red dots and are located directly

(15:38):
beneath the genitals, right near where one might expect the
testicles to be. Though it would be a strange mistake
to make, I suppose it would be possible that the
untrained eye could mistake the anus for a small scab
resulting from a recent castration, especially if you were already
expecting to find such a wound. The fact that the
alleged castration wounds have and described as being remarkably cleanly cut.

(16:03):
Makes it even more likely that the surprisingly unanosy appearance
of the anus could be misinterpreted as the remains of
a juvenile's testicles. That sounds reasonable, I'd say, uh, point
number one already a home run. Number two. Why am
I so intimately acquainted with the appearance of squirrel butts,
you might ask, Well, when caring for baby squirrels, you

(16:24):
have to be sure to regularly stimulate each baby's anus
slash genitals in order to help them poop slash p
We typically do this using a wet cotton ball to
gently wipe the squirrels bellies, but in the wild the
mother uses her tongue to achieve the same result. In fact,
it's even possible, although probably a bit of a stretch,
that some misinterpreted castration wounds were the result of accidental

(16:47):
biting on the mother's part. This makes sense as well.
This is a solid there. And both of these really
drive home the fact that if you are watching any
wild animal, or even a domestic animal, and you are
just expecting very anthropomorphic or sort of beatrics Potter story
book um behavior, you're going to be disappointed because these

(17:07):
are animals, and they're going to behave as such. They're
then they're not going to behave necessarily like you expect
them too. Well. Also like charging animal behaviors with associations
to human taboos, because like the idea of a mother
licking that their offsprings anus, that that's like so weird
in the human context that you see an animal doing

(17:29):
that and you think like there must be something sinister
going on. Yeah, yeah, indeed. Um, speaking of which, I'm
definitely hoping that we get to do a Thanksgiving episode
on poop eating and animals, because this is another example
of something that is certainly a taboo and human circles,
but there's some wonderful examples from the animal world in

(17:50):
which it is regularly practiced and is a part of
being a healthy young member of that species. We already
smash the cuteness of squirrels into oblivion. We're about to
take bunnies from you as well. No, no, no, I
take that back. Squirrels are still cute. They're still cute,
even though they sometimes the flesh and brains and whatever. Alright,
So back to Bevy's email number three point number three.

(18:14):
In the episode, I believe that you expressed doubt at
the theory that some of the misinterpreted wounds were the
result of other baby squirrels trying to suckle on the
mail's mistaking their privates for mother's nipples. It's possible that
I made that doubt up, though, no. I That was
what one one author wrote into jama when they were

(18:34):
having the big late nineteenth century squirrel castration debate. One
author wrote in with this as a hypothesis, and I
was trying I couldn't quite tell if the person who
wrote this was joking, because it sounded like it might
be a joke, but he was saying, like, well, maybe
it's other squirrels in the nest trying to get nutrition
and mistaking well, you know, so here picking up with

(18:56):
Bebby's email. It's possible that I made this doubt up,
though I was trying to clean up some particularly rank
possum poop while I was listening to the episode, so
I was understandably a bit distracted. However, I think that
it's actually a valid theory to consider. Although I haven't
observed it myself, I've heard from other volunteers at the
shelter that it's relatively common for possum infants to try

(19:17):
to suckle on each other if they have no mother present.
I've never heard or seen of this behavior in baby squirrels,
but it's definitely a possibility. Well that's interesting, so maybe
that that writer was not joking. Number four. My final
note regarding squirrel castration is that, at least in juveniles,
male and female squirrels look very similar. Interestingly to me

(19:38):
at least, though maybe I'm just weird. This does not
mean that a male's penis is hard to spot, but
actually the reverse females instead look a bit like they
have penises. I'm not quite sure why that is, since
it seems less likely that females would have volvas that
protrude from the body than it would be for males
to have penises that stayed close to the body. Well,
it wouldn't be that crazy. I mean, I think we've

(20:00):
talked about hyenas on this show before, and I have
a similar situation, with female hyenas being the larger of
the species and having some similar characteristics with their their
sex organs. Yeah uh so, she continues, I don't know
if the sexes remain difficult to differentiate once they reach adulthood.
Since adult squirrels are vicious little monsters whose butts I
luckily don't have to deal with on a regular basis.

(20:22):
But if they do, then in the very specific case
of Hunter kills a male squirrel with descended testicles and
then compares it side by side with a female, it
might be conceivable to maybe think that the female was
a male without testicles. Combine this with the possibility of
misinterpreting the appearance of the anus, and you've got yourself
an urban legend in the making. I apologize for such

(20:45):
a long email, but your episode was absolutely fascinating and
completely sparked my interest. Keep up the good work, Bevy.
Oh and then Betty also shared some photos from the
shelter with us, and then another follow up from Bevy quote,
I have an update on my email. I asked some
of my fellow volunteers about squirrels suckling on each other,
and it turns out it's quite common. In fact, we

(21:07):
had to split a group of siblings up yesterday for
that very reason. Well, I don't think the suckling would
create raised areas on the skin, it could definitely explain
scabs and other injuries. On the genitals of juveniles. And
that concludes Bevy's massive dissertation on squirrel anuses and genitals. Uh,
that's great, That's exactly the kind of field report we
were looking for. This was an awesome listener, Male Bevy,

(21:30):
Thank you so much. Now I just have to go
back to our discussion of of barbecue bones for a second.
And isn't it interesting that you know that that some
humans might be thinking, Oh, I'm so creeped out because
squirrels are actually eating meat. We the species that have
streets literally littered with the bones of the creatures that

(21:50):
we consume, as as sometimes it's just mere snacks. You know,
it seems a little absurd, doesn't it. Well, Yeah, so
like I'm waiting to get on the bus and I
throw my barbecue bones on the sidewalk, and that's normal,
but if a squirrel comes and picks it up, that's weird.
All right? I have one I want to read here
from Tony. Tony says I was very pleasantly surprised to

(22:12):
see two recent episodes dealing slowly with squirrels. I've only
listened to the first at the time I am writing this,
but I had to immediately send up this email. My
girlfriend and I recently moved into a new home to
the horror music and discovered a fair amount of squirrels
roaming the property. Thinking they were adorable, we begin feeding them,
much to the chagrin of my family members, who told

(22:33):
us we'd regret it. We ignore there weren't in warnings
and continued to put out a buffet of choices each day,
corn seeds and unsalted in the shell peanuts. We bought
it just for them. To make a long story short,
the squirrels have become very demanding, and on some mornings
there will be no fewer than six or seven on
our deck begging for food. They'll run along the window

(22:54):
sill or sit on our lawn chairs. In some cases
of particularly aggressive squirrel will scratch at the door or
even jump onto the screen and climb around until we
provide nourishment. In the first attacked attached picture, you will
see a black squirrel on its hind legs begging, and
in the second a squirrel is on the screen which
you can't really see, making for a fascinating image. Thanks

(23:17):
for the informative and entertaining shows. I'm off to listen
to part two now, uh, and that was Tony from
a suburb of Chicago. We never heard from Tony again too,
so I did not know if the squirrels eventually just
burst into the house like Night of a Living Dead
and just consumed everybody they got him. Now he mentioned

(23:37):
this photo. This is a photo of a squirrel climbing
on the outside of a screen door. But you can't
see the screen in the photo, so it just looks
like a squirrel hovering upside down in the hair with
its belly exposed. This is pretty good. Yeah, I like it. Uh.
I feel sort of the same way with the squirrel
feedings that we're going on at our house up because

(23:57):
for a while I would when I would go to
put out the meal worms, I think all they would
have to hear is just the sound of the the
aluminum container that we keep them keep the food in.
And then six or seven would come and they would
and they would be like a scuffle, Like which squirrel
we'd even watched, you know, mused to see, like which
squirrel is kind of the alpha squirrel just able to

(24:18):
fight off all the others. So is it gonna be
the you know, the slightly red faced squirrel or the
blondie squirrel. It's certainly not going to be the warble
covered squirrel because we have gotten to see a couple
of those there. They we mentioned those in those episodes
about how the bot flies will affect them and they'll
have these warbles in which the larva are growing. Uh, yeah,

(24:41):
we've we've seen a couple of those. It was also
very interesting to observe them the week or two before
my family went on a trip to Costa Rica. Costa
Rica being one of the parts of the world where
you will encounter the human bot fly that we that
we discussed in the episode, So you know, you couldn't
help but think in the back of your mind, like like, oh, God,
is this gonna happened to me? Am I going to
come back from Costa Rica with with giant warbles in

(25:03):
my neck full of larval spawn. Fortunately didn't happen, Like
that would have made a good episode though, Yeah, I
figured it was like, well, it would probably be good
for the show if I got a bottle fly. Uh
you know, we could even bust out some video of it.
But thankfully I didn't have to make that. That choice. Well,
I'm a little sore at Nature for denying us hashtag content. Alright,

(25:24):
this next message comes to us from our listener, Emily.
She writes, good afternoon, guys, huge fan of the show.
I especially loved your squirrel episodes as I was listening
to you discuss the possibly carnivorous squirrels hunting down and
eating deer. And to be clear, we we didn't really
believe that story. No, that was the one that came
to us via the Russian media as right. But Emily writes,

(25:47):
first of all, I believe it. I then remembered that
last winter where I live in northern Wisconsin, it was
quite a tough one for our wildlife friends. It was
bitterly cold, we had several feet of snow, and the
winter was very long. It continue you to snow well
into May. The deer population had had a particularly hard
time around the time where vegetation should have been returning.

(26:08):
The deer found only frozen dirt. They started starving off.
The deer were desperate, and we observed some odd behaviors
from them. The strangest was the deer appeared to become carnivorous.
There were many reports of deer eating birds and squirrels,
So if squirrels turned to hunting deer, the deer turned
to hunting squirrels. The forest is a rough place, and

(26:29):
she shares some videos she found online. Again, I'm a
huge fan. Keep up the good work. Well, thank you, Emily. Yeah,
I've actually heard about deer eating meat before, and and
not not predation and hunting, but like scavenging from carcasses.
It's surprising how many animals we think of as purely
herbivorous will dive into some meat if, if, if, nature

(26:50):
drives them to it. Yeah, I mean, ultimately, it's all energy, right,
all right, here's another one. This one comes to us
from Merle. Merle writes in and says Robert and Joe,
I just finished loosten to both squirrel episodes and found
them entertaining and informative. I trapped squirrels for a living.
I know this sounds an odd job for the twenty
one century. However, it is also a very important job.

(27:11):
Ground squirrels, as implied by their name, it dig a
long and deep burrows. This is a fine way to
avoid predators and is excellent out in the wilderness. The
problem occurs when they burrow into our levies and dams,
when our waterway structures become unstable, flooding and mass property
damage occurs, as well as possible loss of life. While

(27:31):
I don't hate squirrels, I recognize the need to manage
their population. Just to note, I live trap. Anything that
isn't a ground squirrel is released. Love the show. Now,
I love that bit of insight, and it just sort
of the uh, the real world ramifications of of squirrel
activity and that it is going to become necessary to
to to check their populations in some instances. Yeah, I

(27:54):
can certainly see how that would be a big problem
when they're when you're talking about levies and damns. Though,
I just got a horrible parallel thought, which is, like,
I bet there's some there's some squirrel control going on
in like California golf courses, right, Oh yeah, but there's
a whole lot of unnatural things going on with with
California golf courses. I'm picturing Caddyshack, but it's a but

(28:15):
it's a ground squirrel. Oh yeah, Caddyshack. Well, the Catty
Shack gives it. Uh, you know, I'm not much nicer
we can relate to Caddy Shack. There's very little in
the golfing world I can relate to, but I can
relate to catty shack ground squirrels groove into yacht rock,
chewing up golf courses on the West coast behind. Yes,
I'm on the squirrel side all right. This one is

(28:35):
from our listener, Trey Uh. Trey says, you're welcome to
share any of this info. Keep doing a great job.
I am from western North Carolina, near Tennessee. I grew
up with very old school grandparents. The first story is
the skug hunt. We spent a lot of time hunting
or cutting down trees. On several occasions, during droughts, we
would witness migrations. The floor would appear to be alive

(28:58):
with so many gray squirrels on the move. Papa said
they would chase down prey as a pack. I never
witnessed them killing anything, but Papal would never lie. The
second story is about squirrels and castration. When it comes
down to, dominant squirrels are amazing. I've witnessed on four
occasions fights happening in the trees. Everything was a target,

(29:18):
but the goal was to knock the other squirrel off
to be eaten by the dogs. I don't know if
I'd put that much consciousness into it. Yeah, like you
put the dogs there. Yeah, But anyway, some of them
were smart enough to pick the terrain and would lure
the other squirrels to their doom. Waiting below was the
faithful dog watching for the falling easy prey. I've witnessed

(29:39):
it many locations because squirrels do a chattering noise before
the attack. Also watch a few videos on skinning and
cleaning squirrels. The testicles do rise into the abdomen. Yes,
yes they do. Uh, Trey says. The squirrel inferret story
is most likely BS. We certainly hope so a cape squirrel.

(30:00):
Given the opportunity, We'll put somebody in the hospital from scratches.
These deep lacerations often need stitches. I was shocked about
the Grand Canyon story about squirrels climbing on people. I was.
I was shocked by this story as I was there
to witness it a little. Luckily nobody was hurt. Now
I'm a little curious about Papa's story about the floor
of the forest being covered in squirrels. I mean it

(30:23):
sounds like the ending to um like a Tennessee based
a weird fiction story. From like the thirties. Right, Well,
what's that movie is like Willard where the dad from
Back to the Future is controlling an army Crispin Glover. Yeah, yeah,
I saw that one. I remember thinking he was creepy
in it. So if Crispin Glover controls an army of

(30:44):
rats to do as bidding witch actor controls an army
of squirrels, oh, you would have like a it would
be a squirrel lord. Maybe. I think Christopher Walkin could
play that role. Maybe how about Tim Curry the skug Lord. Yeah, yeah,
Tim Curry could have played the scug Lord at least
a few decades back. Um, this reminds me In Dungeons

(31:05):
and Dragons, you have these creatures called cranium rats. They're yeah,
they're pretty great because they're they're essentially just each one
individually is just a rat, and they're the product of
the elipids, the mind ful airs, and they you know,
they'll go around and they're kind of spies for the elithids.
One cranium rat not the big of a deal. But

(31:26):
if you have two cranium rats, well they have the
pooled mind of two creatures. Three cranium rats have the
pooled mind of three creatures. If you have a swarm
of cranium rats, then you have they all have one
collective mind, and then they take on all these additional
psionic powers, so that they become quite a difficult creature
to encounter if you encounter enough of them. I wonder

(31:49):
if you could have a similar situation if the elithids
were working on the surface, you could have cranium squirrels
sending you know, big big rugs of squirrels sending I
kick fireballs that their enemies. You're gonna work this into
your next campaign. If they ever get back to the surface,
they're all stuck in the under dark, so it's just
gonna be probably rats from here on out. It could

(32:10):
be cranium ground squirrels burrow all the way down. Okay,
that could work. Yeah, I'll go with that. Okay, maybe
we need to take another quick break and when we
come back we will finish up our exploration of listener
mail about squirrels. Thank you, thank you. All right, we're back.
You know, we were just talking about dungeons and dragons.
So it's kind of ironic that our next bit of

(32:31):
listener mail comes to us from Lisa I believe or
Lease l I s e. I guess that's Lease or
Lisa at any rate, She says, quote, I just finished
listening to part one of this and wanted to thank you.
I'm trying to come up with some creepy color text
for my next RPG run, Fate Core, if you're keeping track,
I don't know what. I'm not familiar with that one,
but I mean, there are a lot of of RPG

(32:54):
gaming systems out there, and scheming carnivorous squirrels are just
the ticket. Looking forward to addering deer corpses and have
had that have had their sinews not out around the landscape,
and squirrels hunting snakes and hoarding bones will also work
really well. Excellent. I'm glad anytime we can inspire an
RPG campaign. I feel like we've we've done a good job.

(33:16):
The Monsters of Reality once again outstripped. The surprising and
wonderful nature of the monster is in the Monster Manual. Indeed,
though I guess the deer corpses, that's probably not. That's
probably not reality? Is it probably not? Probably not? Okay,
here's the fun when this comes from our listener, Erica.
Erica writes Hello. First, I want to say I love

(33:37):
your podcast so much and listen to it all the
time at work. It's wonderful and I'm so happy you
guys are making it well. Thank you for listening, Erica.
She writes, growing up, I watched Arthur on PBS all
the time. Robert, you know the show, Ah, yeah, I
know of it, Arthur the Ardvark. I think my son
has watched it a little bit. Is he's the guy
with glasses? Yeah, yeah, he has glasses sweaters. Yeah. And
I think if I remember correctly, he may have been

(34:00):
one that was one of the books about him was
a Reading Rainbow book back in the day, and uh,
and then it eventually became its own series. I feel
like the same thing happened with The Magic School Bus. Okay,
I could be it could be wrong on Arthur, though,
some of my fellow Reading Rainbow viewers will have to
China on that well. Erica says, uh, I watched Arthur
on PBS all the time growing up. And as soon

(34:20):
as you mentioned in part one that you were looking
for horror movies about squirrels, it came to mind, not
the movie yet, she just said. It's referring to Arthur. Yeah,
one episode focuses on this movie called The Squirrels, also
the title of the episode from season ten. Most of
the characters watched it, and they were all afraid of
squirrels for a while until they got over it and

(34:40):
learned a valuable lesson about irrational fears. The next movie
they all decided to watch is called The Birds. So
in case you're interested in finding a recreation of the
Squirrels or making your own, it would be a good
jumping off point. Have a great day. Oh you know,
I actually we're we are recording this episode before Halloween,
and I think I may just have to look up

(35:02):
that episode to show my son, because you know, Halloween
is this weird time where we're kind of encouraging all
these uh, you know, terrifying ideas and all, and uh
it is a good reminder, I think, at least for
for young children, that you know, we're we're engaging, we're
leaning into a lot of irrational fears this Halloween, and uh,

(35:22):
you know, we don't necessarily need to live in fear
of the scugs. This this is kind of a tangent,
but at what age do you generally think kids start
learning to enjoy being scared, like telling the difference between
like unpleasant fear and pleasant fear. I don't know, I
mean just going boo happens pretty early. So I feel

(35:44):
like they're they're they're versions of it that kick in
reasonably young, because ultimately, like what's a what's a jump scare?
What are any of these things but false positives? Right?
All right? This next one comes to us from Dan. Hello, gentlemen,
was excited to see your episodes on squirrels pop up
in my feed and I immediately knew I had to
write you to share a personal squirrel experience that makes

(36:07):
me shutter to this day. About fifteen years ago, I
lived in an apartment which had an old but functional
grill on the back deck. There's a squirrel that lived
near the apartment, which I came to no one's site.
The squirrel seemed to enjoy being very disruptive around our
apartment area. It would frequently go on our back deck
and chew things up or knock over plants. Maintaining bird

(36:29):
feeders was an impossibility. If we were grilling, I had
to keep a watchful eye because the squirrel would sneak
up and take food. I responded by frequently throwing acorns
or small pebbles at it. The longer we lived there,
the more I threw them with bad intent. One day
I went out to use the grill, I turned the
valve on the propane tank. I momentarily thought I heard

(36:50):
something a little unusual, but I didn't think much of it.
This obviously was poor thinking on my part. I then
turned on the grill burner and proceeded to try to
light the grill with the grill lighter and then a
gas lighter, to no avail. After probably close to two
minutes of stubbornly trying to light the grill, I decided
to investigate why it wasn't lighting. I turned off the

(37:10):
grill burner and I honed in on the unusual sound
I had heard, which was still clearly there. With a
lump in my throat, I looked underneath the grill, and
what I saw shook me to my core. The grill
gas line, which consisted of a tough synthetic rubber coated
coating over a not insubstantial metal core, had probably nickel
sized holes chewed through its side near where it connects

(37:33):
to the burners. Gas was visibly and rapidly pouring out
of the hole and spreading into an all around the
enclosed area at the bottom of the grill. Several other
bite marks were also apparent on the line. I rushed
to turn off the tank valve and then stood way
back from the grill to let the gas dissipate, all
the while shocked that I had not blown myself up.

(37:54):
As I stood there, wide eyed, I looked into the
backyard and I saw my nemesis perched on two legs,
watching me intently. The scientific part of my mind tends
to think that this must have been a coincidence, as
the squirrel had a proven chewing history, and it frequently
was in our backyard anyway. However, I cannot help but
consider that maybe the squirrel had grown tired of my

(38:16):
continued harassment and had decided to get even. Thanks for reading.
I love the show. Keep up the great work yours, sincerely, Dan.
I was on the edge of my seat. Dan. Well,
like I said, we received that email what several weeks back.
So I hope Dans still okay and the squirrels, or
at least he's worked it out with the squirrel nation. Well,

(38:36):
I think this was supposed to be fifteen years ago.
But maybe you squirrels might have a long memory. Yeah,
or the the there is the memory of the individual squirrel.
But remember the cranium squirrels. They're they're going to hold
the grudges. Okay, This next message is from our listener
Amelia Amelia Rights, Hey, Joe and Robert, your podcast on

(38:57):
squirrels was illuminating. Thanks to your efforts at day K
long mystery has been solved. Let me explain. As an undergrad,
I took a lot of walks along the bluff outside
my campus early my freshman year. On one of these walks,
I saw something extraordinary, A fuzzy mammal, alarmingly flat and wide,
scurrying across the quad. I was so surprised by this
weird road and I thought I'd misidentified a rat or

(39:19):
gray squirrel. Subsequent sightings, however, laid waste my doubts. There
were dozens of them, typically clustered along the tree line
behind my dorm. A friend reported similar sightings, chalking it
up to common squirrels that had been run over and
inexplicably survived. I had my doubts about this conclusion and
began searching in vain for online information on what I

(39:40):
dubbed the pancake squirrel. When college ended, I moved to
an apartment in the same area. I continued to see
pancake squirrels hustling through parks and even around a nearby Corey.
Not until I listened to your podcast and grew curious
about the California ground squirrel did I discover my answer.
Following your first episode, I googled California ground squirrel and
immediately recognized by beloved pancakes. I didn't know that the

(40:03):
species lived in Portland, Oregon, but the local population seems
to be thriving. Thanks again for helping solve a mystery
and keep up the good work. Sincerely, Amelia, I'm glad
we could dispel the notion of essentially zombie squirrels flat
zombie squirrels. Uh. You know, it is interesting, how just

(40:24):
noting the differences in squirrel species. I recently rewatched the
horror film It follows. Oh, it's a great one. Yeah,
after the three years of trying to get my my
wife to watch it, she finally gave in and and
loved it. But there's a scene where one of the
characters is in a swimming pool in the backyard, and
she's staring up at the trees and the sky, and

(40:44):
there's a scene where a squirrel is making its way
across a power line or something, or you know, a
telephone line. And instantly what what occurs to me is
like that is not like the squirrels we have here. Like,
clearly this is a Michigan squirrel. It's um, it's it's
a slightly different species of some sort. I haven't checked
to see exactly which species it is, but it's clearly

(41:06):
not the same creature that we have here in the
Georgian environment. You know, Robert, you have just made me
think I have a mission now in life, and the
mission is to make squirrels a spooky animal. You know,
they're inherently spooky animals. There's the bat, there's the spider,
there's the wolf, the children of the night, the animals

(41:28):
that are automatically associated with Halloween and spooky times and
vampires and all that. We gotta make squirrels one of
those animals. We've got to get them into the club. Yeah,
if you can do it safely without endangering species, because
that's unfortunately the other side of it, right, is animals
that have long been considered spooky have often suffered for it.
Oh yeah, certainly. I don't want to encourage squirrel culling

(41:50):
the way that would be like wolf culling. But I
don't know, has it has it really harmed? Uh? Well,
I was gonna say, has it harmed bats? It probably has.
It's definitely harmed bats. Yeah. But if you if we
established it as like squirrels are dark but somehow holy creatures,
you know, uh, they should not be messed with, but
they represent something you know, dark and foreboding, then I

(42:13):
think I could get on board with that. All right,
We have one last listener mail for you here, and
it's a pretty long one, so we're going to break
this one up. Okay, Robert, do you want to go
first to start reading? And uh when I when I
can't go anymore, I'll tag out. This comes to us
from Mako Dear Stuff to blow your mind. Hello. My
name is Macho. I'm nineteen years old, and about a

(42:35):
year ago I started listening to your show as my
first regular podcast and have been a frequent listener ever since.
I've listened to episodes from throughout the show's history and
love the work by all your shows various hosts. I
have greatly appreciated all the wonderful information, conversation, and humor
of the episodes, and I have just felt a real
connection to the show since it's right up my alley.

(42:55):
My whole life, I have spent many hours of every
day engaging with the world and learn about all the
wonderful things in it through books, documentaries, walks, exploration, artistic outlets, conversation,
and Wikipedia. I have always been fascinated with many scientific, natural, cultural,
and historical topics and have always loved storytelling and fiction.
I've filled my head with information about the many wonderful

(43:15):
things in this world and universe and always thought to
learn more about them. That's why the show feels right
at my alley. In the last couple of years, I
haven't been able to read, walk, create, an explore as
much as I used to or as much as I
would like to, But listening to your show as I
go about my daily routine has helped to fill in
some of the gaps. For that, I am truly grateful. Anyways,
today I wanted to share some experiences I have on

(43:35):
the subject of your recent episode Squirrels. My Family and
I currently live in the San Joaquin part of Central
Valley with our flock of several hundred free range chickens,
and have so for four summers. This is our fourth.
In our time here, we have experienced nothing short of
terror at the hands of the squirrels. First, a little context.

(43:58):
The squirrels around here are a our California ground squirrels.
They are not chiefly our boreal squirrels. They usually live
in fairly open, dry areas and and dig deep, winding
burrows in the ground that instant concentrations can deform the
local area. In their regular environment, wetlands and oak woodland
check the squirrel's ability to dig burrows and provide habitats

(44:21):
for squirrel predators. The problem is that of California's wetlands
have been destroyed, and much of the valley's oak trees too,
in their place has risen endless wide open farmland and
semi urban areas that have proven prime squirrel habitat as well.
Many squirrel predators rattlesnakes, hawks, coyotes have been accidentally or

(44:42):
purposely driven out. The result is a place like ours.
On the property we live on, there are thousands of
squirrels and tens of thousands more along nearby canals and
in neighboring fields. This is obviously a problem for many reasons,
but even more since they prey on our baby chickens.
The from the smallest chicks to the ones of pushing adults.

(45:02):
The squirrels have attacked countless chicks. Although they often attack
them in the open, what they'll usually do is way
behind vegetation fences or and in their burrows and pop
out at chicks. They'll grab them with their claws and
bite them on their arms and legs, main nerves to
disable them before dragging them back to their burrows, who
are just violently dismembering them where they are. Either way,

(45:26):
they essentially chew them to death. Think Pennywise, remember that
opening scene from it. That's essentially what happens. Wow, So
the chicks are peering in the storm storm, the sewer,
the sewer grade and uh this saying like my boat. Okay,
I'll pick up from here. Mako continues, but the similarities
don't in there. Remember the burrows, Well, they're all over

(45:49):
the yard, hundreds of burrows that form a sewer like
system across the property. It's like a dairy with five
hundred pennywise is, that's hairy the town and in it
d e r r y with five hundred pennywise is,
and the death toll is about the same. Our chickens
are free range, so being picked off by predators now
and then is pretty much unavoidable, but the squirrels have

(46:10):
proven to be something else entirely. Keep in mind before
I continue, that we only have a few hundred chickens
at any given moment. Although it is often difficult to
determine cause of death, especially with disappeared chicks, by carefully
examining the clues of each disappearance and considering the likelihood
of all possible causes, we have determined that the squirrels
have most likely killed an excess of a hundred chickens

(46:31):
over four summers. That is more than all other predators combined,
and that list has, at various points included opossums, coyotes, dogs, humans, cats, snakes, eagles, hawks, falcons,
unidentified mammalian creatures, raccoons, ants, and more, including the unstoppable
force of nature the ghost hawk. All of them are outsiders,

(46:54):
though if a chicken is surrounded by two dozen coyotes,
they're going to be up a tree faster than you
can shout yote. If a chicken is surrounded by two
dozen squirrels, though, they won't realize something is wrong until
it's too late. Why shouldn't they. These are the same
animals that eat out of seed piles with them, and
the squirrels have used this to their advantage. Robert, you
you were talking about a study we looked at in

(47:15):
the episode that that mentioned something about this, right, the
the insinuation predation. Yes, yeah, that that that definitely came up. Yes,
where the squirrels just sort of gets you used to
them because they're like, Oh, I'm just harmless, little squirrel.
I'll hang out right next to you. Yeah, I forget that.
The fact terminology a bit of something to the effect
of cultivating prey tolerance or something to that effect. Okay,

(47:38):
picking up in Mako's message, Um, squirrels have used that
to their advantage. Groups have lost half their members. Big
rooster chicks have been killed defending their siblings. One time,
three members of a group were killed in twenty four
hours and a fourth was permanently disabled. Another time, a
tree fell and chicks that went near the tree started
disappearing moms have fended off multiple squirrels that corralled their

(48:01):
baby simultaneously. An entire group of eleven was systematically hunted
and killed, the only time this has ever happened in
our flocks history. So many chicks have been killed by
the squirrels, it has stunted the population growth significantly, and
they don't stop at the chicks. We've found countless songbirds, rabbits,
small snakes, and most commonly California ground squirrels killed by

(48:22):
the squirrels. Of course, we've taken many preventative measures with
some success, and killed many hundreds of squirrels with little
effect on their numbers. One of the problems is how
tenacious the squirrels are. There was one instance where a
squirrel had a struggling chick bigger than its head in
its mouth, and I saw it. I gave chase, yelling
at it, but the squirrel did not drop the baby.
When I've done the same with coyotes, they'll usually drop

(48:45):
whatever chicken they're holding. The squirrel, however, just kept jumping
over foot deep poles and tree roots and eventually diving
under a fence, still carrying the baby. The tenacity isn't invincible, though.
When we put seed out for the chickens, they eat
relatively slowly and don't stand a chance against the squirrels
that can just shove a whole scoopful in their cheek
in their cheek pouches. However, the squirrels and other birds

(49:08):
can start foraging about an hour and a half earlier
in the mornings than the squirrels can, so we can
put food out early in the morning so our birds
won't starve. One o their help we've gotten in the
battle against the squirrels is from a local Egret. When
Egret has learned to wait in the fields when the
grass is long and fork the squirrels as they exit
their burrows. It will then fly off with the swarming

(49:30):
road and presumably to slide it down its gullets somewhere. Well,
that's probably the most positive note I can leave off on,
so I'll cut this short, but I would like to
weigh in on the king of the rats debate. I
believe it was Joe who said that the squirrels could
be considered king since they have an altitude advantage. However,
if you take a walk in the woods at night
in places like here, guess what you'll hear chittering and

(49:52):
skittering and squeaking in the tree canopies all around you.
Rats the rats in the trees. Well, this is a
lie full email. I like, really a nice summary of
just nature unbalanced, you know, just talking about the in general,
how the the California wilds have been unbalanced. And then

(50:14):
if you have, you know, some sort of domesticated farm
activity with an outside species, what does that do to
the surrounding predators? Yeah, well, a farm is an unnatural ecosystem,
and when you try to do some kind of like
farming that's not clearly surrounded by boundaries that keep it
separate from the rest of the the surrounding ecosystem, which

(50:37):
you ultimately cannot do. I mean, if nothing else, you're
gonna have to deal with potential pathogens and whatnot. So
I mean that's just that's just part of the exercise. Yeah,
but still a lovely tale. I enjoyed hearing all of it.
A lovely tale of slaughter. Thus is the life of
the squirrel? All right? So that you have it. Bunch

(51:00):
of listener mails and some additional host comments about squirrels
a k a. The scugs. Um, I hope you enjoyed it,
and certainly if you have additional insights and field reports
of squirrels, uh right in, we'd love to hear here
here from you. We probably won't do another devoted uh
you know, dedicated squirrel listener mail episode, but we'll do

(51:21):
more listener mails so we may touch touching on the
subject again in the future. Yeah, this has been fascinating,
especially to hear from people who have a lot of
hands on experience with the world of the wild scugs.
So thank you for getting in touch and as always,
keep those messages coming. In the meantime, head on over
to Stuff to Blow your Mind. That's where you'll find
all the episodes of the podcast, going back all the

(51:43):
way to the very beginning. You'll find links out to
our very social media accounts. You'll find that tab for
our store where you can find that cool Cambrian logo
we were talking about. And you know, at some point
I would love to get a Scug shirt in there.
I know we've had some some listener requests for some
Scug merchandise. Uh you know, I don't know, I'm thinking
maybe you know, something looks like a slay er T

(52:05):
shirt except it's scugs. I don't know that's good. Yes,
if they do lend themselves well to that sort of interpretation,
but but we'll see, we'll work on that, We'll work
on getting that in place. Huge things. As always to
our wonderful audio producers Alex Williams and Tarry Harrison, if
you would like to get in touch with us directly
to let us know feedback about this episode or any other,

(52:25):
to suggest a topic for the future, or just to
say hi, let us know how you found out about
the show where you listen from that kind of stuff,
you can email us at blow the Mind at how
stuff Works dot com, well more almost than Bausands of

(52:46):
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