00:00:09 Speaker 1: From Media dos World News Headquarters in Bozeman, Montana. This is Kel's we can review with Ryan kel Kell and now here's kel fire Hawk a great and dare I say, badass name, and not just for the sake of having a badass name like in that cheesy awesome racing comedy Ricky Bobby. In this case, the name fire hawk is very factual and very old. Australia's Aborigines have known several bird species, including the black kite, whistling kite, and brown falcon as fire hawks for some forty thousand years. These birds are often seen around fires on the Australian savannah, feeding on lizards and small mammals escaping the flaming grass. What's more, fire hawks have been observed picking up flaming stick in their beaks and talents in order to transport the fire to new areas, forcing even more rodents and reptiles to move from their hiding places. You heard that correctly, the fire hawks literally dropped fire from the sky. This incredible story was brought to my attention by one Weekend review listener in Australia. Just last year, a study was published officially observing fire hawks in the act of spreading fire. The Australian Aborigines said, neat, we saw that too, but don't take our word for it. We've only been here for forty thousand years. This week we're gonna talk about honkers as in geese, global warming, zombie moss, as well as a bunch of other interesting stuff. But first I'm gonna tell you about my week. My deck top earth boxed garden is kicking ass, tomato plants as thick as your wrist, enough parsley, basil, lemon, time mint, and shouts to start a little farmer's market. That update was for you horticulture real enthusiast type folks that wrote in wanting an update on my gardening situation and on the subject of folks riding in to ask Cal at the meator dot com, fella named O'Keefe wrote in on the subject of fish and rings, as in the steel head with the ring zip tied to its tail that was mentioned in episode nine of Cal's weekend review. The story that Mr O'Keefe brought to my attention is of Matilda de Tuscanni, widowed countess who accidentally dropped her wedding ring into a local spring She was devastated and prayed to God to get the ring back. In answer to her prayers, a trout rose up from the spring with the wedding ring in its mouth. In recognition of the Pisicene miracle, Matilda funded a monastery on the side of the spring in ten seventeen. A d lovely story, But don't go thinking Matilda was just a well off widow lamenting her man. Matilda of Tuscany or Matilda of Tuscany outlived too Usban's, led multiple armies and out fought Henry the fourth. Matilda was at one point crowned the vice Queen of Italy by Henry the Fifth and is actually attributed with the funding and founding of over one hundred churches. But back to the beer. That monastery is where you get the Belgian Trappist beer named Orville, you know, the one with the logo of a fish holding her ring in its mouth. In order to be authentic Trappist beer, the beer must be brewed within the walls of a Trappist monastery under the supervision and control of the community of monks. The revenue from the beer outside of keeping the abbey running is devoted to social Services. There are only ten Trappist Abbey's brewing beer, six in Belgium, too, in the Netherlands, one in Austria, and one in the United States. So thanks for ratting in, Mr O'Keeffe, I feel like I learned something. We're sticking with the Social Services desk, but moving over to Denver with this piece of news. Colorado Parks and Recreation worked with the U s d AS Wildlife Services to capture Canada geese from the City of Denver's parks and move them to a meat processing facility. From there, the geese would be killed, processed, and ultimately cooked for the city's ever expanding population of families and people in need. According to the U s d A, the Colorado Front Range is currently supporting forty four thousand mating pairs of Canada geese between Colorado Springs and Fort Collins. That's only a distance of a hundred and forty six miles along the corridor. That's about six hundred and two geese per mile, what the U s d A calls a critical mass inside the city of Denver during the summer season. The Parks Department estimates that they have a population of five thousand geese, which produce around five thousand pounds of goose poop per day or a hundred and forty thousand pounds of goose poop per month, poop, of course, being the real issue with these geese. Quick side note, and I don't mean to add to their problems, but when I've walked in Denver parks, goose poop was just one of several varieties I encountered, and of those varieties was actually the least troubling in my opinion. But anyways, the park system is a perfect place for geese. We've created an environment that is basically predator free and loaded with food. Well, Denver is now harvesting that overabundance of wildlife and feeding it to those in need. I say, way to go, Denver. Ultimately, the Department of the Interior is allowing for a maximum take of geese per year by us DA officials. By my estimates, even a small goose will yield more than enough meat for a family of four. That's hundred people being fed if they are able to hit that quota. And that's a low estimate. For the naysayers of this project, I think you're right. This isn't a long term solution for goose poop and parks. But I can assure you and any real long term solution that does come forward won't be as palatable as this one. And you know what they say, when life gives you lemons, make some goose pastrami. Sticking to Colorado, Colorado Parks and Wildlife is attempting to reinstate a sense of wild into the not so wild wildlife on Mount Evans near the Mount Evans Scenic Byway. Mount Evans being one of the prominent Front Range peaks visible from Denver, so thereabouts, mountain goats and bighorn sheep are starting to get a little too friendly with the sightseeing crowd. In response, state officials are going to use paintball guns, cattle prods, tasers, and a trained canine named Sampson to put a little fear into them. The goats and big horns started frequenting the Mount Evans Scenic Byway, which is the highest paved road in the US, in order to lick up salt used as d is er. Animals were even seen licking car tires for the salt. Well. One thing led to another and people started feeding them. Soon sheep and goats were poking their heads into open car windows, and even in one case, a goat briefly climbed onto the hood of an suv. The animals have been observed running toward people carrying food, and even exhibiting a behavior you may have noticed around dogs, which is running towards the sound of crinkling cellophane. Now we all should know what happens when you combine undulates and fast moving cars. So it's high time that they demonstrate to these animals that there's more to lose from hanging around highways than there is to gain. The Colorado Highway Department will no longer be using salt on the road for de iSER and for you people quit feeding them. In fact, I'm gonna suggest Colorado Parks and Wildlife officers start pointing their dogs and tasers in the other direction, back to the source of the problem. Now we're heading over the deep ocean. Talk about an issue that's a serious bummer, but I'll try to turn into an example of something positive. Plastic in the oceans. Unless you live under the proverbial rock, you're aware of the fact that our oceans have become a giant receptacle for plastics. Our waterways and general have become a means of moving plastics. Hell, I just got sent a water filter designed for backpacking with a label on it saying it filters of microplastics. But back to the oceans, and to keep numbers manageable, we're gonna talk plastic fishing gear like nets, lines, ropes, that sort of thing. An estimated six point four million tons of plastic fishing gear is either discarded or lost in the ocean every year. You know, when you flick a booger off the end of your finger, that booger may disappear from sight, but it didn't actually disappear. Just like that gross chunk of sluft skin, snot and nose hair, This fishing gear, although not attached to a person, is still a booger too. The gear keeps fishing even though you flicked it off the end of your boat, or lost it to a storm or accident or what have you. Marine wildlife is being entangled, hooked, and bound by old fishing gear. A brand spanking new net set today in that ocean has the potential to lie for six hundred years. As fish enter the net and get tangled, they attract predator fish as they struggle, then again as the carcasses decomposed, they attract scavenger species looking for an easy meal. These nets can stretch for as long as two miles and they basically rebait themselves over and over again, collecting thousands of fish and marine mammals on their own. It's a nasty way to go. So to get to that upbeat part of this situation I was talking about earlier, scientists are starting to use more and more data collected from individuals posting pictures to social networks. Your phone is capable of collecting verifiable data, even if you are a total knucklehead. Recently, a research scientist from the University of Exeter led a team that scoured research papers from nineteen forty onwards and Twitter from two thousand nine onward for reports of sharks being entangled and lost fishing gear. In the ten years of data compiled by Twitter, they found wie as many reports have entangled marine life than in the eighty years of scientific reports. This doesn't mean quit writing your doctoral thesis and pick up Twitter. This just means that verifiable data is verifiable data. Doctorate not required. The age of the citizen scientist is back joined the ranks of folks like John Muir and that guy in Columbia from a couple of episodes ago, who snapped a picture of a thought to be extinct weasel species on his toilet. Don't get bummed out by plastics awash in the ocean thinking that you can't help document your fines, post pictures and ask questions at a minimum, if you want to get more involved their citizens, scientists, social groups for just about anything you're interested in, from gardening too, bugs, birds, two stars. Did you know? Uranus was discovered by a musician and his sister with a homemade telescope, William and Caroline Herschel. Moving on to Kentucky, firefighters from four counties responded to four five thousand barrels of burning bourbon at the Gym beam Warehouse in Kentucky. Aside from the obvious impact on the local party scene due the lack of roughly two point three million gallons or three hundred five million, two hundred eighty thousand one shots of beam, the local fishery took a hit as well. The torrents of water being poured on their fire took the bourbon down to the Kentucky River, resulting in a twenty four mile long plume of bourbon and the waterway and thousands of dead fish. The fish aren't dying from alcohol poisoning, but from an abundance of bacterial growth resulting in depleted oxygen levels in the water. Although this bourbon spill scenario may seem wild to those of us living outside of the Bluegrass State, the Emergency Response Team manager for the Kentucky Department of Environmental Protection said, quote, the state knows how to handle bourbon spills, and we've had several occur in the state, so when this one occurred, we were just ready for it and knew what the actions were to take, which apparently is get that bourbon plume downstream to the Ohio River and get it diluted, kind of like pouring a bourbon for your grandma. Got to add a little extra water in there. Not. The first bourbon spill is a bit of an understatement, specifically for Old Jim Beam. Back in two thousand three, a lightning strike to the gym Beam warehouse resulted in eight hundred thousand barrels of bourbon going into the creek. Last year, another fire resulted in a nine thousand barrel spill, and to repeat the latest spill of forty five thousand barrels from just last week. That's a lot of bourbon. Now, I'm not one to come around any sort of temperance, and I have, in fact enjoyed some gym beam bourbon. But my gosh, if you look at these numbers, it's a wonder this stuff ever makes it out of the state, much less to a bar in Missoula, Montana. When you take into account the frequency of the spills and the ecological impact of hundreds of thousands of fish dying. If the fish are dying, it's safe to say that some other critters probably aren't just partying it up. In the bourbon filled waters of Kentucky, the crawfish and invertebrates are taking a hit as well. So consider all that and take this quote in again from the Kentucky Department of Environmental Protection quote, the state knows how to handle bourbon spills, and we've had several occur in this state. So when this one occurred, we were just ready for it and knew what the actions were to take. Reminds me of that line from The Princess Bride. These words you're saying, I don't think they mean what you think they mean. Heading over to our what people do for fame desk. An actress appearing on another one of those damn survivor style reality TV shows, maybe heading to prison for allegedly collecting, killing, and cooking an endangered clam. The show Law of the Jungle was being filmed on location at hat chow My National Marine Park in Thailand. Tai waters hold five of the eight known species of giant clown found in the world, though two of those may already be extinct due to over harvest for food, the aquarium trade, and decorative things and obnoxious houses. You know the type. Anyway, the actress in question was filmed pulling an endangered giant clam from a protected seabed, which could be punishable by up to four years in prison. Really goes to show you, no matter who you are or where you find yourself, you gotta read those fisheries regulations carefully. On the bright side, if Law of the Jungle films the prison stent, it will be the only one of these so called reality TV programs that shows the actual reality of testing survival skills. They won't even need to change the name. Moving on to the climate change desk, all A Comnium turgitum, on once extinct species of moss has come back to the land of the living. The moss has been under a one foot thick wall of ice known as the tear Drop Glacier on Ellesmere Island since least eighteen fifty. Ellesmere Island, of course, is where rapidly and wide ranging Arctic fox vixen dispersed to from episode ten of Cal's Weekend Review. Anyway, Elsmere's tear Drop Glacier has been receding and scientists have been at the ready to pick up new or old species exposed by the retreating ice. The scientists were primarily looking for what was happening with plant and animal life before the glacier, but in a handful of cases they found out what is happening currently as in life in spite of the ice. Ala Comnium turgitum being one example, the long dead moss grew new shoots and leaves when placed in nutrient rich soil in a warm and bright laboratory, despite being frozen for a hundred and sixty nine years. If that's not interesting enough, another team has revived a patch of frozen buried moss from under a three foot layer of perma frost that's estimated at fift hundred years old. But wait, there's more. I'm microbiologist at the University of Tennessee has brought back million year old bacteria in the lab and even specimens with actual heads, brains, nervous systems, and anuses nematodes from way back in the place to scene. These samples came from Siberia. These findings have all sorts of implications in regards to understanding the robustness of life in the extreme environments of Earth and how once frozen landscapes may be able to re establish life when the receding glaciers have gone. But perhaps the most important in the immediate and short term, you, the listener, can go challenge your friends at the water cooler, park bar, or dinner table with this bet. You don't know what the oldest living animal is. Answer nematode forty one thousand years old, a half millimeter long worm like animal that lived at the time of the Neanderthal and still lives now, just you know, in a lab. Lastly, on Cal's Weekend review, I want to talk again about feral cats. Feral cats and their semi domestic, free roaming cousins attribute to the deaths of two point four billion birds a year in the US, as well as the deaths of twelve point three billion small mammals per year in the US. If those statistics don't shock you, that's fine, but you may want to postpone that family trip to Disney World, and not just for the potential family fistfights. A feral cat was just picked up by animal control and tested positive for rabies. A sixty day rabies alert has been issued in Orange County, California, adjacent to the famous park. Rabies is not some sort of frontier type disease only found in mangy old yellow dogs. That's an old yellow reference and a Disney movie, by the way. According to the Center for Disease Control, there have only been twenty three reported cases of rabies and humans in the past decade, with eight of those cases coming in from outside of the US. We should stop here and make the point that a raby's infection almost always results in death. Those twenty three cases of rabies reported in the US, twenty one out of the twenty three ended with the death of the infected. Roughly one person every ten minutes is treated for possible exposure to the rabies virus. These infection rates are historically low, as in we are winning the disease battle against rabies, which has been primarily attributed to animal control measures, including outreach programs to vaccinate pets. Let's not slide backwards on this fight against rabies because we like to think about feral animals living happy lives when we aren't looking. Orange County Animal shelters receive over one thousand feral cats per month during typical summers, about two fifty cats per month in the winter. That's a two thousand fifteen statistic, by the way. In addition, the Happiest Place on Earth has its own cat problem, with two employees being treated for rabies exposure and one employee being treated for flea borne typhus, a disease that in rare cases can cause blood to harden in the veins and brain swelling. That doesn't sound so happy to me. I'm sure Pluto and Goofy and the rest of the creators in the Kingdom would agree. Thanks for listening to Cal's weeken review. As per usual, let me know how I'm doing at Ask cal at the meat eater dot com. Go to wherever podcasts are streamed and downloadable, hit subscribe, and leave me a review by hitting the furthest right hand start I'll talk to you next week.