The Science Pawdcast

Season 6 Episode 34: Chonky Microbes, Tick Meds, and Wildlife Conservation with Dr. Charlotte Milling

• Jason Zackowski • Season 6 • Episode 34

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Unlock the secrets of nature's smallest wonders and their potential to save our planet! Discover the world of microbiology with "Chonkus," a cyanobacterium found in Italy's volcanic waters that might just hold the answers to climate change. Explore the hidden dynamics of the ocean's microscopic ecosystems and learn how these unseen organisms are critical to our environmental future. 

Join us as we chat with Dr. Charlotte Milling, an expert from Eastern Washington University, who shares her insights on the environmental footprint of our furry friends. Learn about the surprising effect of pet parasiticides on pond ecosystems and the rare insects that inhabit them. With Dr. Milling's expertise, we explore the need for pet owners to be more ecologically conscious and the importance of safer pest control alternatives. Personal stories of pet care experiences underscore the significant role we all play in preserving our natural habitats.

Explore fascinating wildlife tales, from urban coyotes to raccoons navigating the wetlands of Manitoba. Hear about the challenges and strategies in managing these adaptable creatures and their impact on conservation efforts. Dive into the enchanting realm of pygmy rabbits and the urgency of safeguarding their sagebrush habitats. Finally, enjoy a collection of endearing pet antics and family escapades that blend humor and heart, illustrating the joys of sharing our lives with animals. It's a tapestry of science, wildlife, and those unforgettable quirks of life with pets.

Dr. Millings Links!

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wildchar27/

Website:

https://ohiocoyote.org/researcher/charlotte-milling

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Speaker 2:

Hello science enthusiasts. My name is Jason Zukoski. I'm a high school chemistry teacher and a science communicator, but I'm also the dog dad of Bunsen and Beaker, the science dogs on social media. If you love science and you love pets, you've come to the right place. Put on your lab coat, put on your safety glasses and hold on to your tail. This is the Science Podcast. Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Science Podcast. We hope you're happy and healthy out there. This is episode 34 of season 6.

Speaker 2:

Oh boy, do you live in a place like where we live with the time change, that it is dark all the time, where you wake up and it's dark and I drive home in the dark and I don't see the sun until the weekend? Um, it's a little depressing, maybe, and surreal, because we've been walking the dogs and this happens every year. It's not like this is a new thing that we've ever have to experience. Um, but like, for from about the start of November till December after the time change, we walk the dogs in the dark. Uh, by the time we get home, even if we rush home, it's dark. So it's a little surreal walking with headlamps on in the pitch black. Um, it's maybe spooky the first couple of times, but then you know there's a beauty to the darkness out in the country, the stillness and the quiet. And of course, the dogs love it, they don't care that it's dark, they just get to go for a walk.

Speaker 2:

Okay, well, what's on the show this week in science news? Chris and I break down a story about a chunky bacteria it's hilarious. Monkey bacteria, it's hilarious. And in pet science, a warning about dogs swimming in lakes and rivers after they've had tick medication applied to them. It's kind of interesting. Our guest and ask an expert is Dr Charlotte Milling, who's an expert in biology, and we get to talk a little bit about Bunsen's wild cyst, among other things. Okay, the bad joke, these are bad. What did one pimple say to another? Hey, what's up sista? Okay, that one's terrible. I know we don't want acne, but bacteria insist. Okay, before we lose listeners, let's move on to the rest of the show, because there's no time like science time. This week in science news, chris and I are going to be talking about a bacteria that might be the savior in the future for climate change. Chris, did you do any microbiology at all in high school? Do you remember studying little bugs?

Speaker 3:

No, I don't remember studying little bugs, but I did go to Bamfield. I took my grade nine students to Bamfield on the west coast of British Columbia where we experienced all sorts of ocean creatures. That was super cool for the students and potentially it ignited a career in science for those students. It was amazing and awesome. But I also look at sometimes the algae growth that's inside my turtle tanks and I wonder is that like the bad bacteria? And I've asked you that question before and actually we had a guest on our science podcast and I specifically asked hey, what about my turtle tanks? Are they carrying cyanobacterium?

Speaker 2:

And the answer was no.

Speaker 3:

The answer was no, unlikely. I was like woohoo, awesome.

Speaker 2:

I was lucky enough in my science degree to be able to take some microbiology classes. They're a lot of fun. Nothing beats looking at microbes and creepy crawlers underneath a microscope. And you're right, that's something that when we do that with the high school kids, some of them have never used a microscope before. They just love it, they get addicted to it. It's looking at an unseen world that's all around them, rached into their eyeballs. This microbe is on the bigger size, chris, what is this microbe nicknamed Chonkus Chonkus? It's got a big butt or something like Bunsen.

Speaker 3:

Don't body shame the Chonkus.

Speaker 2:

No, he could. If you do a lot of deadlifts, you get a little junk in the trunk and it just means you're really strong too.

Speaker 3:

That's true, and this chonkus is strong at helping mitigate climate change.

Speaker 2:

So if you go way back in time, this type of bacteria is similar to the early bacteria on earth. We actually had a guest a couple of weeks ago that talked about the early life on earth was probably cyanobacteria, and a type of cyanobacteria is mistakenly called blue green algae, and that's what you were referencing in your turtle tank Ocean ecosystems tying in your Banfield story. They have a whole bunch of oxygen producing organisms, but this is a new one. It's a mutant cyanobacteria, codename UTEX3222, codename U-T-E-X-3-2-2-2, but they just simply named it Chonkus, and that's because it's really big and it might be valuable in addressing climate change in the future.

Speaker 3:

Recent findings were published on October 29th in Applied and Environmental Biology and they were talking about the physical characteristics and unique traits of chonkis and they were comparing it with other cyanobacteria. And there was a gif of chonkis settling at the bottom of a water test tube and what that showed was that it settled much faster than a typical cyanobacterium strain and formed a dense green sludge.

Speaker 2:

So it is chunky and it is dense.

Speaker 3:

And it is found in the shallow, sunlit waters off of Italy's Volcano Island, where volcanic gas-rich groundwater interacts with the ocean, which creates an ideal environment for photosynthesizing, carbon-consuming microbes.

Speaker 2:

That's like the early Earth circumstances. That's why cyanobacteria flourished in a very hot ocean full of dangerous, deadly groundwatery stuff from the volcanoes that were erupting all the time.

Speaker 3:

But, like you said, this is a mutant strain, so better call the x-men. It's identified as a spontaneous mutant strain of the s elongatus, a well-known photosynthesizing bacteria central to marine food webs you know, elongatus sounds like it can stretch itself.

Speaker 2:

So that sounds like like mr fantastic of the fantastic four, like really stretchy but he's not an x-man, so I think we have a little bit of a crossover. Yeah, I'm not sure if there's probably there's a million X-Men, I'm sure that there's an X-Men that can stretch itself. Why would this be helpful for climate change, Chris?

Speaker 3:

Because Chonkus grows quickly and it resists environmental stress, which makes it a reliable research organism, and the lab cultures revealed that chonkous cells are larger and they form bigger colonies than other cyanobacteria strains. And what makes it super well adapted to climate change science is chonkous stores more carbon than typical strains and that is evidenced by the white granules within its cells and, like we said, in test tube experiments, chonkis sinks very quickly and forms a dense layer at the bottom, which is a trait that could be advantageous for carbon sequestration.

Speaker 2:

Right. So the idea is it absorbs carbon and then it settles in the water, so it goes away. It takes the carbon from the surface and then traps it, reducing greenhouse gas concentrations. That rapid sinking is the whole idea behind it. It absorbs the atmospheric carbon dioxide faster than cyanobacteria and then it sinks cytosite for a tool of oceanic carbon storage. So, for once, being a little chunky and dense may save the planet. That's science news for this week. This week in pet science, chris and I are going to look at a warning or bulletin that tries to educate dog owners to be careful when their dogs are swimming in lakes and ponds. Now the bridge or the caveat is it's not because the pond or the lake will hurt your dog, it's that your dog swimming in the lake may hurt other things. Now that sounds confusing. What's going on with this?

Speaker 3:

has to do with flea and tick medication, and many dog owners are unaware that the flea and tick treatments can harm aquatic ecosystems, particularly in ponds and rivers where dogs swim, and increasing that awareness could help mitigate environmental contamination so this isn't a guess, right?

Speaker 2:

of course, this is based on research and evidence, hemp said. Health looked at a biodiversity richrich area in London and their study found that there was harmful pesticide levels in ponds where the dogs were allowed to swim. The pesticides identified were imidacloprid and fipronol, so hopefully I said that Maybe it's fipronol. Anyways, they're common in flea and tick treatments and actually this is shocking. I didn't know this, but they were banned in 2018 for agriculture use because they were toxic to insects like bees.

Speaker 3:

And these pesticides are widely used in pet treatments, often as spot-on applications, or they're used in flea collars, and they are now frequently applied as a preventative measure every month. So that's where you get the liquid and you put it in between your dog's shoulder blades.

Speaker 2:

We used to do that with our dogs.

Speaker 3:

Recent research suggests these chemicals are reaching natural waterways via the wastewater and also direct contamination from the dogs that are swimming in those ponds.

Speaker 2:

This reminds me of some of the studies that looked at medication waste from humans. Everybody's on different medications, for whatever reason. You need to take your medications, obviously, but when you go pee, that water from your body has residual medications in it and it's winding up in wastewater too. So if it does that with humans, I guess it could do that with dogs as well. This was published in Science of the Total Environment, and the study does confirm that dogs swimming in ponds do release harmful pesticides as they wash off in the water. So before we get to some of the suggestions, let's talk about the effect of these pesticides because that's what they are, these flea and tick medications on the natural habitat. So I'll go first maybe.

Speaker 2:

Chris Hampstead Health found that the area was home to many rare and threatened species. They were insects crucial for water quality and as a food source for bats and birds. So you might get rid of some annoying insects I don't know mosquito, larva or something like that, because your dog is frolicking around in the pond but you could take out a bunch of insects that other animals rely upon and that's the whole food web or food chain situation, where you eliminate one part of it and the rest suffers. Dragonflies and other pond-dependent insects are also vulnerable to this, and dragonflies are great at catching other pests that are annoying to us.

Speaker 3:

The study analyzed three ponds where dogs swim, three ponds where they don't and six connecting streams. What they found is ponds where the dogs swam had higher concentrations of imidacloprid and fipronil over 20 times the harmful thresholds for invertebrate life. And what they also found was that there was no significant contamination detected in ponds without swimming dogs, and they did find low levels found in streams, pointing to dogs as the primary contamination source.

Speaker 2:

Right and any good scientist will check. Nearby waterways and the big, wider waterways downstreams were not significantly affected. It's like where dogs swim affected the most and as the water moved further down it was diluted. Previous studies seem to back this up that pet parasites in London's rivers entered through household wastewater systems and the problem got really bad during the pandemic, probably because people were home more, or maybe that's when people got pets.

Speaker 3:

Unclear there. But there were some really shocking studies from a survey after this. They surveyed 101 dog owners surveyors. They found that 86% were unaware of the environmental risks of the parasiticides and 94% stated that they would consider environmental impact when choosing their products. But a third were unaware of manufacturer advice to keep dogs from swimming for days after the treatment.

Speaker 2:

That's interesting that it's on the packet, so it's just an education piece. That's missing treatment.

Speaker 3:

That's interesting that it's on the packet, so it's just an education piece that's missing. But over half of the respondents used oral tablet treatments, which the environmental impact is still uncertain.

Speaker 2:

Vets associated with the study emphasize that, yeah, swimming for dogs is fun, it's beneficial for their health, but there probably needs to be better guidance for owners and that I guess, might be on the backs of the vets that are prescribing it to really talk about the danger or the risks of the insects in the water when their dog swims Like it does. Say, don't let your dog swim for days after the application. Are there other parasitides that are better? Maybe, but the big thing is, too, that you shouldn't be applying these all the time, rather than only use them when necessary. Only use them when you're at the most risk for getting those flea and ticks on your dogs. We want to protect our pets right, especially from parasites. We know a thing or two about that, chris.

Speaker 3:

We sure do, and so we always follow the prescribed pill every 30 days in our dogs. But I always ask when I'm at the vet is there environmental implications or maybe a safer way to administer the flea and tick medication to ensure the environment is taken care of as well?

Speaker 2:

the flea and tick medication to ensure the environment is taken care of as well. And as of yet there's no data on that and we've been told no by the vet. So of course that will change if things change. So we'll keep you all posted.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, we'll keep you posted, but ticks are moving up right, they're coming into our area as well.

Speaker 2:

So that sucks, because I've never heard of anybody getting a tick on their body in central Alberta when I was young. Like you'd have to be out, like in the bush, walking through the bush for days and then maybe you'd get a tick, or if you'd hug a moose or something like that. But you shouldn't be hugging moose anyways.

Speaker 3:

Don't hug moose Not recommended.

Speaker 2:

That's right.

Speaker 3:

I think you'd be worried more about more than just the environment.

Speaker 2:

I don't think you'd be as worried about getting a tick from a moose either. If you were hugging a moose, I think you'd be worried about getting squashed. That's pet science for this week. Hello everybody, here's some ways you can keep the science podcast free. Number one in our show notes sign up to be a member of our Paw Pack Plus community. It's an amazing community of folks who love pets and folks who love science. We have tons of bonus Bunsen and Beaker content there and we have live streams every Sunday with our community. It's tons of fun. Also, think about checking out our merch store. We've got the Bunsen Stuffy, the Beaker, sty and now the Ginger stuffy. That's right, ginger the science cat has a little replica. It's adorable. It's so soft, with the giant fluffy tail, safety glasses and a lab coat. And number three if you're listening to the podcast on any place that rates podcasts, give us a great rating and tell your family and friends to listen too. Okay, on with the show. Back to the interviews.

Speaker 2:

It's time for Ask an Expert on the Science Podcast, and I have Dr Charlotte Milling, who's an assistant professor at Eastern Washington University in the biology department. Doc, how are you doing?

Speaker 4:

I am well. Thank you very much for having me. I'm excited.

Speaker 2:

Me too. I'm actually really excited with what you study, but we'll get to that in a second. Where are you in the world? Washington.

Speaker 4:

I am in Washington yes, eastern Washington. So the university is in a tiny town called Cheney, which is just outside Spokane, and Spokane is the second largest city in Washington. So we're on the entirely opposite side of the state of Washington from Seattle and typically people know where Seattle's at.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I've been to Seattle and I've been to Spokane lots because our family, when I was young, we would drive south from Alberta to Idaho and then I think it's just a hop, skip and a jump to get to Spokane from wherever we were in Idaho. I'd have to check Now I introduced you as Dr Milling what's your training in science? Could you tell us a little bit about that?

Speaker 4:

Sure. So I'm a wildlife biologist and my background is from a natural resource perspective rather than a strictly biological perspective. So I have a bachelor's degree in biology from Washington State University and I took a couple of years off from school, worked for Washington Department of Ecology, which is a state agency that is responsible for natural resource management here in Washington, and then I pursued a master's of natural resources from the University of Idaho. So that's an interdisciplinary degree that explores the scientific natural resource management as well as the policy and human dimension side of natural resource management. And then I have a PhD in Natural Resources from University of Idaho, with an emphasis in wildlife management or wildlife science.

Speaker 2:

Gotcha. Okay, I got a nice picture. Thank you. I appreciate that when you were, when you were little, were you a quote unquote nature nut, were you like, out in the wild collecting bugs and slugs yeah.

Speaker 4:

Yes, yes, so I'm a first generation college student and I grew up in a military household, not particularly affluent family. There were no soccer seasons for us. Instead, our family time was spent in the North Cascades, the mountain range that runs Northern California up through BC. It's a particularly wild landscape. It's one of the most beautiful and underappreciated national parks in the United States. It's just a really spectacular place. So we did a lot of camping, a lot of hiking, a fair amount of hunting all in that landscape and I just I valued it so much. I wanted to be a park ranger initially, because we spent so much time in the national park and I looked at the people who did that job and I just I wanted to do that. I wanted to be that. I wanted to spend all of my time in the North Cascades. And then, over the course of the rest of my childhood, my experiences and my time in nature and my time with animals shaped the ultimate trajectory of my career, which is in wildlife biology and especially wildlife, habitat relationships and behavior.

Speaker 2:

Oh, I love that. That's cool and inspiring. Where we live in Alberta, like our farm, sits right at the cusp of the foothill, so looming to the west of us every day is the Rocky Mountains, right, yeah, and our family. We spent lots of time backpacking and hiking and camping, and do the mountains call to you like they call to us?

Speaker 4:

Absolutely, but since I grew up military, I was always adjacent to the ocean too, so I'm torn between those two landscapes. And the North Cascades was perfect because it was mountains, but I was within two hours of the ocean.

Speaker 2:

Ah see, we are so far away from an ocean.

Speaker 4:

And a couple of mountain ranges away.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's just a two-day drive, no problem with that stopping. Not bad. Yeah, the ocean's beautiful as well. Charlotte, could you talk to us a little bit about what you currently do as a wildlife biologist? What's your day job look like?

Speaker 4:

It's a lot of teaching. So the university that I'm at is that's called a regional comprehensive university. It primarily serves undergraduate students and the main responsibility of faculty here is to teach, less so to do research. I teach in our biology program, I teach the wildlife curriculum. So I teach vertebrate zoology, mammalology, conservation, biology, fish and wildlife management those sorts of ecological and natural resource kind of courses. But part of my approach to teaching is to engage students in research in actual boots, on the ground scientific research. So I have a couple of grad students and a couple of undergraduate researchers that work with me to do research on wildlife and wildlife habitat and wildlife behavior, really across North America.

Speaker 2:

Nice Setting up a question, gathering data, writing papers, kind of thing.

Speaker 4:

Exactly yes. So rather than me being the person that goes out and does the research myself, I facilitate students becoming a scientist, so doing that work in order to achieve their own goal of becoming a scientist. They are actively scientists, but become scientists in their own right, independent researchers down the road.

Speaker 2:

My niece when she was little. I forget how it came up, but it's a big joke in our family. Somebody was like Jason's a scientist, like Uncle, jason's a scientist because I've got a chemistry degree. And my niece is like no, he's not, he doesn't have a lab and he really grounded. I was like that's true Because my day job. I'm a chemistry teacher. I teach chemistry at a high school.

Speaker 4:

But in theory your high school classroom is a lab of some kind, that's true, I said I do have a lab at my school classroom is a lab of some kind. That's true. I said I do have a lab at my school.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, not all scientists wear lab coats.

Speaker 2:

That's true, I do, though Some of us wear car parts. Yeah, chemistry is more requirement of PPE, differently than going out into the field with walls. We're getting to the part that I'm the most excited about, because if people who follow us on social media know that Bunsen had a huge medical scare that's our Bernice Mountain Dog in the summer and it turned out he had the most bizarre thing possible, probably from a coyote, somehow like a tapeworm cyst, and you have yeah, so super rare, super like.

Speaker 2:

Dogs shouldn't get it, they shouldn't be part of the life cycle of the tapeworm that way. But anyways, you published something about coyotes and raccoons. Yeah, I was wondering if we could talk about that, because we got coyotes everywhere where we live, not so much raccoons.

Speaker 4:

They're very rare, but we do have yes, yeah, they would be very rare in your area, but coyotes the only state obviously my work very rare in your area, but coyotes the only state obviously my work is predominantly in the United States, but the only state we don't find them in is Hawaii, which means if they're in Alaska and they're in Montana, then they have managed to make their way into Alberta and they are actually all throughout.

Speaker 2:

That'd be one laid back, coyote. If it was on Oahu Kona. Yeah, it would be uncomfortable, I think, with the heat. Oh, that's true. Okay, you're correct?

Speaker 4:

uh, but yes, I do. I have in the past done work with coyotes and with raccoons, although quite separately, living in much different sort of landscapes and habitat types I would love to.

Speaker 2:

what are some things you can tell that you learned from your research about either one of them?

Speaker 4:

Yeah, so let's start with coyotes.

Speaker 2:

Oh sorry, Go ahead yeah.

Speaker 4:

Oh no, I didn't mean to interrupt you. Could you finish your question? I think I talked over you.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I was just going to say we have a beaver that's very popular on social media with some people. His name name is and our we have wildlife cameras set up to basically paparazzi this beaver and we get coyotes all the time oh yeah, wildlife camera. So I I'm curious to know more about them and, uh, just go for it.

Speaker 4:

Tell us what we love that coyotes at this point are ubiquitous across North America and they live in all kinds of habitat. They live in the sort of habitat that you have in and around your home, that kind of more rural landscape, the sort of places where we always expect wildlife to be. But coyotes also thrive in urban spaces. They do exceptionally well in the built environment and that, I think, comes as a little bit of a surprise to people, especially the people who wake up and look out their bedroom window and see a coyote laying in their yard in the heart of suburbia. I have worked a bit with the Urban Coyote Research Project out of the Chicago metropolitan area, which is this really long? It's been going for nearly a quarter century now, this long-term ongoing research project into the ecology of coyotes in urban spaces, and one thing that we've always wondered about but never been able to demonstrate is how unsuccessful moving a coyote is in order to manage conflict. So one of the challenges with wildlife and urban spaces is they can become a nuisance. That shouldn't come as a surprise, right, but a nuisance. Interaction with the coyote can run the continuum between being surprised to see a coyote and that's it. You've just seen the coyote all the way up to an actual aggressive encounter, and aggressive encounters with coyotes are exceptionally rare. People who live in urban spaces often value wildlife highly. They appreciate wild animals. They don't always appreciate them in their yard, and so what's often put forward as a way to manage the nuisance animals is to translocate them, what we call translocating, where you take an animal from its current site and you move it to another site with the intention of it staying there permanently. So somebody might see a wild animal in their yard and think it doesn't belong here. It belongs in the woods. So I'm going to call a wildlife control officer. They'll trap it, they'll take it to the woods. Coyotes are incredibly territorial animals and in an urban space if you have coyotes, it's likely that all of that really great park-like habitat is already occupied by coyotes. They've established territories.

Speaker 4:

Just translocating a coyote, translocating any common animal, that is a nuisance actually. Really it has the potential to be lethal. That animal could home. It could try to go right back where it came from and get hit by a car on the way. It could get into trouble in whatever site it gets dropped at. It could interact negatively with the wildlife that are already there. It may not know how to find food or shelter in its new site. Often survival of translocated animals is very low, but we rarely are able to point to actual numbers to demonstrate how low that is. In the early 2000s, when coyotes were just establishing themselves in the Chicago metropolitan area, the general practice was if a coyote was found in the urban core, wildlife control would or, excuse me, the animal control would trap the coyote in the urban core and then they would transport it to one of the forest preserves in the east excuse me, western portion of the Chicago metropolitan area. There are these really spectacular forest preserves. You'd never know you're in the middle of Chicago in some of these places.

Speaker 4:

So in the process of doing that, some of those coyotes were fitted with radio collars so that we can go out and we can locate that animal after it's been moved. And since we can check on that animal, we can actually determine what happens to it after it's been moved. And unfortunately, what we found is that 100% of our animals either died within 14 weeks or they were completely lost, which means that we ultimately have a survival rate of zero for translocated coyotes.

Speaker 2:

Oh my God, and when we do that?

Speaker 4:

I beg your pardon.

Speaker 2:

It's a death sentence.

Speaker 4:

Exactly that's the challenge we also have. At that same time we have collared coyotes in the exact same spaces that don't get moved, and we know what their survival is, and it's 90% over that same time period in that same space. So when we consider translocation to be a humane alternative, it's only humane in that we are not actively responsible for taking the life of that animal in that moment, but we condemn it to the same fate more often than not, certainly more often than if we had just left the animal where it was in the first place and instead made changes to our own behavior to prevent it from becoming a nuisance in the first place. Simple things like not feeding it and securing pet food, not trying to pet it, having a cat that predominantly lives indoors, those sorts of things.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you know what they call outdoor cats where we live.

Speaker 4:

Coyote food.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, coyote food.

Speaker 4:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

They don't last very long.

Speaker 4:

That's real. That happens here in Spokane, where I live. We have coyotes in the city of Spokane and it happens here too. It happens everywhere you have coyotes. Yeah Heck, a raccoon will do it if it's provoked.

Speaker 2:

So Huh, I did not know that and that, um, that that information is what's the word I'm searching for like powerful, right like coyotes. We have coyotes, and the only time I've ever thought about getting our we've got a, we've got a rifle right, like most farm families have. Like, the only time I've ever thought about getting our we've got a, we've got a rifle right, like most farm families have. Like, the only time I've ever thought about getting the rifle out and getting ready to shoot this thing is when it when coyotes are prowling way too close to our property. But we like have this live and let live like relationship with them, where we live right, which is perplexing to people because they're like we should just go out and kill them. We're like no, they're like they, even though coyote run-ins with people are happen, um, they're extremely rare, you're correct. Like I can't think of a single person in my life who's been attacked by a coyote like it just doesn't.

Speaker 4:

And I fully grant that there are instances where hands-on management is required. Occasionally, you do have a coyote that will bite a human In Stanley Park, BC, not too long ago there were quite a number of coyote attacks in that park.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's true, yeah.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, and there have been no attacks reported since that population was called. The difference is, when you have to euthanize an animal, there are only a certain number of options that you can use and they are all recognized as humane by the. There's like a consortium of vets, the American Veterinary Association. I can double check on that, double check on that. So in those instances pain is mitigated, fear is mitigated. It's rapid.

Speaker 4:

Those things, those traits, may not be the case in an animal that is trying to go back to where it came from or has been released in an area where there are a lot of territorial animals of the same species. Right, that animal may experience fear. It may experience pain and prolonged pain if it's hit by a car. So when an animal represents a true management challenge and euthanasia is warranted, often a humane euthanasia by the appropriate professionals is much preferred to a quote-unquote translocation where you just move the animal away from its problem.

Speaker 4:

Circumstance for common nuisance animals in urban spaces. And another problem with us not us necessarily, but with folks continuing to believe that translocation is this humane alternative is that our tolerance for the animal never grows. Right, we always expect that there are these alternative options and so we never exercise the opportunity to change our own behavior or to adopt that live and let live mentality. So you see an animal in an urban space. That's cool, that's a great experience. That can be really formative for people who are interested in conservation. So if all it is there and it makes you uncomfortable, sit with that. Ask why it makes you uncomfortable. Don't default to it. Doesn't belong there. Put it in the woods Because the outcome is probably not going to be good.

Speaker 2:

Do you? I guess, before we I move to my next question is this conversation a challenge with some people? Like I can see talking to folks and them like straight up saying no, like we got to move the animal, like I don't, like they just don't listen to what you're saying because they don't want the animal around. Do you run into that sometimes Like some unwillingness to to compromise with animals?

Speaker 4:

Yes, this particular example coyotes in urban spaces. I I personally don't run into that pushback because I don't live in the Chicago metropolitan area. I'm sure that the folks who are responsible for managing the coyotes in that system might occasionally encounter it. In my own community I encounter a lot of fear associated with coyotes. Our neighborhood, our community pages will light up, especially during the pupping season when coyotes tend to be wary. We saw a coyote on such and such road. Keep your animals inside, and then that provokes an entire chain of discussion.

Speaker 2:

So I have adopted. Let's get the pitchforks. What's that? That happens here too. It's like let's get the pitchforks and go after this coyote. They see the coyote.

Speaker 4:

And so I have adopted in order to preserve my own mental health. I will engage people who are willing to talk and listen.

Speaker 2:

Right.

Speaker 4:

There's no reaching people who feel the need to vent, and sometimes people just need to vent and that's fine. There's no changing the perception of somebody who is really set on their, whatever their opinion is. I find that's just more protective. But more often than not people just don't even know that this is. We call it a humane alternative and it might not actually be humane. The data suggests that it isn't so. That is surprising to people and because it's surprising, I rarely get pushback. It doesn't challenge any sort of long held belief that they've had.

Speaker 2:

I love this conversation because I've had I've looked at the data from Chicago a few times and I knew I didn't know the survival rate was zero, but I knew it was like super awful, like you're just better off shooting the animal on site than trying to move it without the life it's going to have. Sorry if that's making people sad, but that's good, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4:

It's not great but in general those coyotes have really great survival like better than we would find outside urban spaces because they're not hunted in Chicago, so their survival very high. They're very happy coyotes and people generally are like feel good about them. I think that's because of all of the popular the press that surround them and the PR associated with that project. Like the people that I encounter are often quite proud of the coyotes in their community in Chicago.

Speaker 2:

That's great. I love that. Yeah, Switching gears to trash pandas. You've looked at raccoons. Could you tell us a little bit about what you've studied with them?

Speaker 4:

Yes, so much different landscape. I've studied raccoon behavior at the northern end of their distribution in southwestern Manitoba.

Speaker 4:

Oh yeah, yeah, it's pretty far north for a raccoon, but their distribution has been expanding for about the last half century as a result of global climate change, as a result of changes in agricultural practices, of global climate change, as a result of changes in agricultural practices, and they have become quite prevalent in that landscape, in the Prairie Potholes region and in this place that is now hosting raccoons.

Speaker 4:

There has been a considerable push to conserve waterfowl populations since about the 80s, with a large amount of federal and private dollars from both the United States and Canada has gone into that landscape to protect habitat for those birds and to boost their populations. So at the same time that we're conserving habitat for the ducks, you're conserving habitat for everything else that occurs there, including raccoons, and raccoons are wetland, associated animals, like throughout their distribution. That's what they are. They can exist in other spaces because they're adaptable and they are smart, but they're, by and large, a wetland species. Even though waterfowl conservation is so important in that landscape and even though raccoons are quite prevalent, we've never put those pieces together to ask how are raccoons behaving during the waterfowl nesting season, the time when that landscape is so important to ducks?

Speaker 2:

So we put Does the raccoons like to eat the eggs?

Speaker 4:

that's something the raccoons oh yeah oh yeah, they'll eat a lot of things. They're really opportunistic feeders if food gets in their way or they're doing their little fat boy meandering across the prairies and they encounter a nest, they're going to eat what's in the nest. So they do wreak havoc on nests, as do many other predators in that landscape. But the nest survival so actually producing an egg that hatches and forms a chick like that nest survival is one of the key pieces of the population growth of waterfowl and loss to predation not just raccoons but other predators as well is the number one cause of nest failure. So we wanted to know what raccoons are doing on that landscape, how are they moving through it, how are they using these wetlands? So we fit them with GPS collars, because GPS collars now are small enough that you can put them on an animal the size of a raccoon and you can get three or four months worth of data at really high resolution. So every 15 minutes you get a location on that raccoon.

Speaker 2:

It's like find my friends, but for raccoons.

Speaker 4:

Yes, yeah, exactly, yep, that's exactly what it is, and in fact, it's all transmitted via satellite. So I would log on to the platform from my home in Western Montana in my pajamas and look at what my raccoons in Manitoba have been doing for the last 24 hours. That's so fun that was my morning every day during the waterfowl nesting season for three years.

Speaker 4:

Oh maybe not after three years, but anyways no it's fun every day because they behave differently. Oh, they're so smart and they're just so plastic. So, yeah, we found that raccoons are doing exactly what raccoons do, and that's using wetlands. They're using it for den sites, they're using it to feed. They're using the buffers around wetlands as these might movement corridors. They're using the buffers around wetlands as these might movement corridors. So, instead of walking across the field, they're like using these buffers as these protected spaces to move among the wetlands. So that was one like, pretty important finding is that the buffers provide movement corridors and as you have increased movement, you're going to have increased encounter. So the only way to combat that is to make a larger buffer so that the animal isn't constrained to this really small. Both the raccoon and the ducks aren't constrained to this really small area and then have no choice but to encounter each other.

Speaker 2:

Can I ask a quick question? What's a buffer? I don't know what that is. I know what that is in chemistry, but I don't think we're talking about the same thing we're not.

Speaker 4:

We're talking more about a spatial buffer, so it would be like a band, a continuous band of more naturally occurring habitat around the perimeter of these wetlands okay, so scrubby bushes and things like that lead yeah um, aspen trees, yep, exactly cattails. It's not like the crop runs right into the water itself. There's native vegetation in between the edge of the water and then where cropland begins.

Speaker 2:

Interesting, so they pack along those paths. That's cool.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, yes, and actually you can take like a GPS or like a satellite photo, like a Google Earth photo of this, a farm, let's say a farm, and we'll have these little wetlands in it, because that's what the landscape naturally looks like, and they can't farm through those wetlands, like they're inundated, a crop won't grow. So you have those wetlands and then you wind up with those natural buffers, just because the machinery can't get too close to the water and you can't turn the machinery too tight. So you get those bands of natural habitat around the wetland and then, when you put the raccoon locations, superimpose the raccoon locations on that same image, you just get these dots like peppered in that natural habitat around certain wetlands. So they're using it for a lot. But they're not just using wetlands. Do you want to guess what else they're using?

Speaker 2:

are they swimming? They do that too like hopping up in trees and hopping through the Yep, that would be in the buffer Trash.

Speaker 4:

Pandas, there's your hint.

Speaker 2:

Like garbage trucks.

Speaker 4:

They're using farms. They're using human buildings.

Speaker 2:

Oh, okay.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, not only now do you have those natural, discrete, like plots of natural habitat in the landscape, but they've also got these little islands of not native, not typical habitat peppered throughout the landscape as well, and we were finding that the animals were foraging both in the wetlands and in human use sites oh man none of this is blowing the lid off of what we know about raccoons, right, Like raccoons, like wetlands, shocker Raccoons forage around human use sites shocker.

Speaker 4:

But now we can put all those pieces together for what they mean for waterfowl conservation, and that is if you truly want to have an impact on raccoons in that system and reduce their depredation of nests, you have a couple of options. One of those is habitat conservation. Increase the amount of land that's available to all of those animals so that encounter rates go down. They don't see each other as much. A raccoon walking around the edge of a wetland doesn't hit every duck nest along the way because they have more space to move through. That does double duty of providing additional habitat to waterfowl Win. You can also look at that landscape and you can say what human use sites exist. Simply because it was too much effort to take them down. There are all sorts of abandoned barns, abandoned homes. There's like just a pile of cars in that landscape for no inexplicable reason.

Speaker 2:

That's where the farm truck dies, that's where its grave is, and it lives there forevermore.

Speaker 4:

Exactly, you can begin to invest in dismantling those basically piles of refuse, those piles of functionally garbage, and that deprives that animal of that artificial spot on the landscape and it can start to eat into the population's growth in a more natural way. So if there aren't so many refuges, those animals are going to be limited in the amount, the number, the abundance of them that can live on the landscape, because there's simply not enough space for them if they're all using those abandoned buildings, whatever. So two options for managing problem raccoons in that landscape. But it's all interesting because we just didn't know what they were doing there. They're like a new animal. They've been at really low abundances. They may have existed there all along, but it would have been at really low numbers and just in river bottoms. But now they're much more abundant and they're big raccoons.

Speaker 2:

I've never seen a raccoon in my years that I've lived on the farm, but our trail cam caught one slinking by and we're like.

Speaker 4:

Oh my God, it's a raccoon and we lost Wow.

Speaker 2:

And it was very exciting. And and then talking to some other farm folk that live where we live, they're like yeah, we've so-and-so has seen a raccoon. It's always like a friend of a friend, like billy's second cousin saw a raccoon and now we have proof with our own eyes that there are raccoons yeah, probably, my guess would be not very many oh, yeah, I like obviously. Yeah, I don't know like hardly any for sure.

Speaker 4:

The winters, really cold winters, will keep them from becoming overabundant. They're not built for really extreme weather, so you get that. Yeah, and they go into. They don't, they don't hibernate, but they'll go into kind of what we call a torpor. So just slow down in their metabolic processes, slow down in their activity and they'll huddle up when you get these really cold snaps, and so if there aren't enough places for them to den down and be protected from the cold weather, then you're going to see not very abundant or not super dense raccoons.

Speaker 2:

Interesting, doc. I so appreciate you talking to us about your work with coyotes and raccoons. I have 17 follow-up questions because this is I just love. I love wild animals. But in the interest of time, I just want to ask you about what you're currently doing with pygmy rabbits. Yes, because in your you've teased it like a very good clickbait. By the way, that would be very good. What is it called Copy? You said they're the cutest things ever. So what's going on with these pygmy rabbits?

Speaker 4:

So they are the cutest things ever. And that's science. That's just objective fact. That's not my own personal opinion at all. Pygmy rabbits are the smallest rabbit in the world. They are truly adorable. They max out at about a pound. You can hold one in the palm of your hand. If you've never seen one, I implore you Google it. It will make you so happy. Oh, they're little.

Speaker 2:

Oh, they're little. Yes, there's two of them. They're little. Yes, it has two of them in their hands.

Speaker 4:

Yes, those would be. Yeah, they're babies. Yeah, they're kids. Yes, so cute.

Speaker 4:

So pygmy rabbits are closely associated with sagebrush. They are a sagebrush specialist species, so we only find them in sagebrush systems in the Great Basin and the Intermountain West in the United States. Sagebrush is a habitat type that is rapidly shrinking for lots of different reasons and like other sagebrush associated species, the pygmy rabbit is imperiled and we have a population of pygmy rabbits in the state of Washington, in central Washington, that has been spatially isolated so it's been left alone from other populations of the same species for so long that it's now genetically distinct. So this still the same species, but it's got its own gene thing happening. That population in the Columbia Basin of Washington is federally listed as endangered and it was listed in 2003. So we're now at more than 20 years of that animal being listed and there have been some success stories associated with the pygmy rabbit and it's certainly worth continued investment. But because we are continuing to lose sagebrush steppe habitat in central Washington, it warrants continued research and continued attention.

Speaker 4:

One of the projects that my students and I are working on is an assessment of habitat quality effectively for pygmy rabbits in central Washington. We've been looking at sagebrush stand structure. So how dense the sagebrush are, how much of a sagebrush canopy is alive? We've been looking at burrow placement. We've been looking at the factors that contribute to their perception of risk in their environment. So how much protection do they have from predators, both in terms of cover and their ability to see a predator coming? We've been investigating the influence of the thermal environment on pygmy rabbits. So we've been coming at this from a variety of different ways, all with the intention of providing sufficient knowledge for managers to make informed decisions about where to reintroduce the rabbits in the future. If we identify what components of the habitat are important to pygmy rabbit survival and reproduction, then in theory we can identify spaces on the landscape that have those same properties and would therefore contribute to a successful reintroduction effort.

Speaker 2:

Oh, so amazing. So these little guys need a little bit of help and the scientists are doing the work to help them in the future.

Speaker 4:

Absolutely. Yep, I've been working with pygmy rabbits for a very long time. They are so interesting, they eat sagebrush for like a hundred percent of their winter diet. No other animal can do that. They use burrows. They're active, they dig their own burrows. That's pretty uncommon for rabbits. Only two rabbits in North America do that. They are active all through the winter, all through the summer. They're just amazing little animals.

Speaker 2:

And they're only in that one area of Washington. That's where they live.

Speaker 4:

The Columbia basin. Population is restricted to that part of Washington, but they occur throughout the Great Basin. So we've got them in Washington, idaho, parts of a tiny little sliver of Montana, oregon, wyoming, utah, tiny little sliver of California and maybe Colorado. I'm back checking, I'm fact checking. Yes, nevada and colorado, yep they, they're so cute.

Speaker 2:

They remind me of the rock picas that we have in the yes way up high. They're just like little adorable fluffy guys yes, they're related, pika are in the rabbit family oh that rabbit order.

Speaker 4:

Actually they're in the rabbit order that makes sense.

Speaker 2:

They're rabbit, like in their appearance they are uh, I'm glad I asked the question and like we're running out of time because I I have lots more questions about pygmy rabbits. But, folks, the doc said, do yourself a favor and, like Google, image search pygmy rabbits because, yeah, you'll feel better about your day after looking through them 100%. We have some standard questions we ask our guests about, yeah, and one of them is for our guests to share a pet story from their life. I was wondering if you could do that with us, charlotte.

Speaker 4:

I can. So my dogs, Kimber and Sophie, were an important part of my education. They were with me through my master's, my PhD and into my postdoc and unfortunately they both passed over the rainbow bridge. But when I was working on my PhD I lived in this old home and I had a wood fire fireplace, fireplace insert and the first cold snap that we got of the year.

Speaker 4:

I woke up the next morning and I'm sitting in my living room and I can hear this weird rattle in my stove pipe and my dogs and I watched the stove all day because we kept hearing this weird rattle.

Speaker 4:

And then all of a sudden we heard this like thunk inside the fireplace and I opened the fireplace up and two flickers had warmed.

Speaker 4:

The northern flickers, this really beautiful bird, had warmed themselves on the top of my stovepipe and had wound up, getting caught in the pipe itself and couldn't get back out. So they just fell down the stove pipe throughout the day until they landed in my wood fire fireplace. The fire was out at this point, it was just a warm fireplace. So I opened this, my fireplace door and these flickers pop out and it's immediate chaos in my living room, with me and these flickers and my two dogs chasing each other in the living room of our house and we managed to get the flickers shooed outside. But for days afterward the dogs would sit and just intensely watch the fireplace and then they would meander through the house to the different places that the flickers had perched themselves as in route to their escape and just watch these different shelves in the house and for days we could not convince them that the flickers were not still in the house. So they themselves were also wildlife biologists.

Speaker 2:

That's a great pet story. And what breed of dog were they? Or were they a rescue? The two of them.

Speaker 4:

They were lab, german Shorthair, some kind of cattle dog, we think Australian Shepherd mixes. They were a surprise litter from a family in Olympia, Washington.

Speaker 2:

Yes, I can imagine if birds shot out of a pipe in our house, I would have one golden retriever Very interested beaker.

Speaker 4:

I bet you would.

Speaker 2:

Um Bunsen wouldn't care, he's got no prey drive whatsoever. I think Bernoulli would just be excited to be part of everything and not know what's going on. Yeah.

Speaker 4:

He's happy, cause everyone else is happy.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and then ginger would probably catch one of the birds because she is a killer. Yeah, would probably catch one of the birds because she is a killer. Yeah, that sounds about like the dynamics I would have expected. What a great story, and for people listening at home, I had accidentally muted myself, which is a good thing, because I was laughing and would have distracted the audience from the story. Thanks for sharing your pet story. As we close, I challenge all of our guests to share a super fact with us, something that they know, that when they tell people it blows their mind a bit. Do you have a super fact for us, doc?

Speaker 4:

Oh, I do yes.

Speaker 2:

Go for it.

Speaker 4:

The largest mammal that is capable of hibernating is. Do you want to take a guess?

Speaker 2:

Of hibernating. The largest mammal Of hibernating is do you want to take a guess Of?

Speaker 4:

hibernating. The largest mammal Of hibernating, the largest mammal capable of hibernating.

Speaker 2:

I would probably guess like a Kodiak bear or like a grizzly bear, but I would be wrong because I don't know if they hibernate.

Speaker 4:

It is a marmot.

Speaker 2:

Okay.

Speaker 4:

That is the largest mammal capable of true hibernation. Okay, that is the largest mammal capable of true hibernation. So true hibernation requires dropping the body temperature down to an extremely low temperature, sometimes barely above freezing, and in fact Arctic ground squirrels can even drop their body temperature lower than that. And bears are not capable of dropping their body temperature that low. So bears go into what's known as a torpor, which is similar in that they're not active. Their metabolism slows down, their body temperature drops to about let's see, 33 degrees C, but that is not true hibernation. 33 degrees C, but that is not true hibernation. And it blows people's mind to learn that bears are not actually true hibernators, they just wouldn't be able to warm themselves back up.

Speaker 4:

It would require so much energy to bring their body temperature back up from zero. For an animal that size, it's just not possible.

Speaker 2:

I knew that, and when I said the bear I was like wait a second. Some other biologists at one point or time on the podcast has told me they don't have her date either. Thanks, disney, or would whoever put that misinformation in my brain probably a lot of sources, I'm sure.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, the Marmot. There we go. That is a super fact. Very cool, Doc, we're at the end of our chat. Thank you so much for being our guest today. In the future, if you're ever willing to come back, I have a list of follow-up questions like 20 long that we just we didn't, we ran out of time for. But also, are you on social media? Anywhere Can people follow you or connect?

Speaker 4:

I am on social media.

Speaker 2:

Okay.

Speaker 4:

My Instagram handle is at wild char 27.

Speaker 2:

Okay.

Speaker 4:

It's mostly running pictures, sometimes work pictures, lots of dog pictures.

Speaker 2:

What that's? Wild char, wild char, what. Can you say that one more time Sorry. Can you say that one more time Sorry.

Speaker 4:

Wild char 27.

Speaker 2:

27. Okay S H A R.

Speaker 4:

C H A.

Speaker 2:

R. I'm dumb yeah, wild char.

Speaker 3:

Okay.

Speaker 2:

We gotcha. The Bunsen and Beaker account is following you All right.

Speaker 4:

What's with the pirates? What's going on there? Yeah, so I turned 40, like less than a month ago, and there's this really great Jimmy Buffett song that I've loved since I was a kid and it's called a pirate looks at 40. And so since almost as long as I wanted to be a wildlife biologist, I've wanted to throw myself a pirate looks at 40 birthday, and I did this year.

Speaker 2:

Uh, that's awesome. Um, um, we'll make sure your instagram handle is in our show notes, doc. So great on that. Um, I have had so much fun. I've learned so much from chatting with you and I hope our audience has too. From our family to you, thank you for being our guest today on the show thank you, it was my pleasure yay, have yourself a Okay.

Speaker 1:

It's time for story time with me, adam. If you don't know what story time is, story time is when we talk about stories that have happened within the past one or two weeks. I have a bit of a story. My story has to do with Bunsen, a little bit Bunsen and Bernoulli. So my story is I have two little stories. The first one's about Bunsen almost in entirety. My first story is about how we had to move, how we had to move our setup from upstairs to downstairs for story time.

Speaker 1:

And mom does like the what's the things that you guys do with the PopHack people? Oh, pophack chat, pophack chat. And then also, I think mom does spaces down here too, right, yeah, mom moved downstairs because Bunsen was barking and he was. He, he likes attention. And then when he realizes that he's not getting attention, uh, he, he, he gets a little, he gets a little loud, um, because he wants more attention. Because he wants more attention.

Speaker 1:

But then my other story is about Bunsen and Bernoulli. They like to talk to each other. So when someone gets home, all the dogs are barking and they're barking, and then they stop barking because they're done barking. But Bernoulli and Bunsen just keep barking at each other. They keep barking at each other and they talk with each other, but they won't stop until you stop them, because I guess they just like talking to each other. They keep barking at each other and they talk with each other, um, but they won't, they won't stop until you stop them because they just, I guess they just like talking to each other. But bunsen and but it's, it's. It's funny because bunsen and bernoulli, like bernoulli, used to have a tiny, tiny dog bark because he was a little puppy, but now he and bunsen sound very similar. So he, he and bunsen are, I'd say, they pretty. They're getting pretty close to the same size, um, but their, their barks are very similar, like very, very similar in in how they sound.

Speaker 1:

Uh, I have a story about um, about the ducks recently. Uh, annalise and Papa gave the ducks watermelon and peas and the ducks really like the watermelon and the and the peas. Um, ducks, really they, they like, they like anything that isn't grass. So when you give them watermelons or peas, they go crazy and they go mental. They really like it when we change their water too, because ducks get really dirty and the water gets really muddy. But when we change the water they go around and they jump into the water and they jump over each other to get into the water. Um, but yeah, like the, the ducks go crazy for anything that isn't grass or mud, because that's what they're like. They have their feed but, like, when they're out, they they don't usually they, they they've. They've eaten their food already. Um, so, the watermelon and the peas, they really like it.

Speaker 2:

Um, dad, do you have a story I do, that's funny about the ducks, adam. So, uh, bernoulli has now advanced to being off leash on longer walks. He's a. He's a big enough size that I'm not super concerned. If he runs into a coyote, something bad will happen to him. He's actually huge now. Um, and adam's right, he's catching up to bunsen, which is shocking. He is so much bigger than beaker now.

Speaker 2:

Uh, but the funny thing is is that bernoulli is like a hundred percent heart, so he goes hard and he's frolicking about and we we've been on longer walks now. So he'll run, run, run, run and then stop and he'll realize he has no idea where he is. So if he, he'll run and then he'll lose sight of us, or he'll lose sight of Beaker and Bunsen, because sometimes they're doing their own thing and it's not like we're really far away, but you know a little bit away. And then he'll. He stops and he's like I have.

Speaker 2:

It just reminds me of Gandalf in the Fellowship of the Ring, where he's sitting in the mines of Moria and he's talking to Frodo and he's like I have no recollection of this place. Because he stops and he looks around and he's like where, where am I, I have no idea where I am, and then he'll see Bunsen, beaker, me or Chris, and then get all happy and run over to the person that he knows. But it's just kind of funny. He has the self-awareness, after being really happy, that he's completely lost and that's my story. All right, mom, do you have a?

Speaker 1:

story.

Speaker 3:

I sure do. As you may or may not know, december is coming and in December I do a fun thing with the dogs and Ginger called Advent, and Jason and I had to go get food for Ginger. Well, basically I had to go get food for Ginger, but I drug Jason along and I'm very glad that the PetSmart was our first stop because I was able to not only get the cat food for Ginger, but I was also able to get a whole bunch of stuff for Advent, and I'm super excited about all the shenanigans that we're going to get up to when we start that in December. And Jason just looked at me and he smiled and he's like oh, chris. And then I had about four more stops, which, um is definitely three stops too many in town, but it was really good, cause we started off on a high note with all the Advent adventures, and that's my story.

Speaker 1:

All right, I think that's it for story time. Thank you so much for listening to my section of the podcast and thank you for sticking around to the end, the end of the podcast. I'll see you on the next one. Bye-bye.

Speaker 2:

That's it for this week's show. Thanks for coming back week after week to listen to the Science Podcast. We'd love your support. Think about rating the Science Podcast. Wherever you can rate a podcast, tell your friends and family about it. Share the word. We think it's a great show. Special thanks to our top tier patrons, the Top Dogs on the Paw Pack. If you want to hear your name, check out the show notes as a way to support us monetarily. Okay, chris, take it away.

Speaker 3:

Bianca Hyde, Mary Ryder Tracy, check out the show notes as a way to support us monetarily. Okay, Chris, take it away. And and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and.

Speaker 2:

For science, empathy and cuteness.