This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:30] Alex Stompoly: Welcome to Ale! And Well Met! I'm Alex Stompoly.

[1:00] Diego F. Salinas: And I'm Diego F. Salinas.

[1:30] Alex Stompoly: Today, we're diving into a topic that might be a little controversial for some.

[2:00] Diego F. Salinas: That's right! We're talking about varmints.

[2:07] Alex Stompoly: You know, those pesky little creatures that can cause all sorts of trouble.

[2:14] Diego F. Salinas: Exactly! Whether it's raccoons, squirrels, or even the occasional possum, we've all had our experiences.

[2:20] Alex Stompoly: And we have some great stories to share today.

[2:30] Diego F. Salinas: Plus, we have a special guest joining us later to share her own experiences.

[2:41] Alex Stompoly: Yes! Anjali Bhimani will be here to talk about her squirrel-related trauma.

[2:49] Diego F. Salinas: It's going to be a wild ride, so buckle up!

[2:58] Alex Stompoly: But first, let's get into some of our own stories about dealing with these varmints.

[3:19] Diego F. Salinas: I remember one time I had a raccoon that was just relentless.

[3:29] Alex Stompoly: Oh no! What happened?

[3:39] Diego F. Salinas: It kept raiding my trash cans every night. I tried everything to keep it away.

[3:49] Alex Stompoly: Did you ever catch it in the act?

[3:59] Diego F. Salinas: I did! One night, I was up late and saw it rummaging through my garbage.

[4:09] Alex Stompoly: What did you do?

[4:19] Diego F. Salinas: I just watched it for a bit. It was kind of fascinating, honestly.

[4:34] Alex Stompoly: They are clever little creatures!

[4:49] Diego F. Salinas: They really are. But eventually, I had to take some action.

[5:04] Alex Stompoly: What did you end up doing?

[5:19] Diego F. Salinas: I set up a trap and caught it. I felt bad, but it was necessary.

[5:29] Alex Stompoly: That's the tough part about dealing with varmints, right?

[5:39] Diego F. Salinas: Absolutely. You want to be humane, but sometimes they just won't take a hint.

[5:49] Alex Stompoly: Have you ever had to deal with squirrels?

[5:59] Diego F. Salinas: Oh, definitely! They can be just as troublesome.

[6:09] Alex Stompoly: I had one that kept getting into my bird feeder.

[6:19] Diego F. Salinas: Those little acrobats! They can get into just about anything.

[6:29] Alex Stompoly: I tried everything to keep it out, but it was like a ninja.

[6:39] Diego F. Salinas: Right? They’re so agile!

[6:49] Alex Stompoly: I ended up having to take the feeder down for a while.

[6:59] Diego F. Salinas: Smart move. Sometimes you just have to outsmart them.

[7:09] Alex Stompoly: Exactly!

[7:19] Diego F. Salinas: So, what about you, Alex? Any pest stories?

[7:29] Alex Stompoly: Oh, I have a few!

[7:39] Diego F. Salinas: Let's hear one!

[7:49] Alex Stompoly: Well, there was this time when I had a family of raccoons living under my deck.

[7:59] Diego F. Salinas: Oh no! How did you handle that?

[8:09] Alex Stompoly: I tried to ignore them at first, but they were so loud at night.

[8:19] Diego F. Salinas: I can imagine!

[8:29] Alex Stompoly: Eventually, I had to call animal control to help relocate them.

[8:39] Diego F. Salinas: That’s a tough decision to make.

[8:49] Alex Stompoly: It really was. I felt bad, but it was necessary for my peace of mind.

[8:59] Diego F. Salinas: Totally understandable.

[9:09] Alex Stompoly: And now, I’m much more cautious about keeping my outdoor spaces tidy.

[9:19] Diego F. Salinas: Good call! Prevention is key.

[9:29] Alex Stompoly: Speaking of which, we should probably bring in our guest soon.

[9:39] Diego F. Salinas: Yes! Anjali Bhimani is going to share her own experiences with varmints.

[9:49] Alex Stompoly: I can't wait to hear her stories!

[9:59] Diego F. Salinas: It's going to be a lot of fun.

[10:09] Alex Stompoly: Alright, let’s take a quick break before we bring her on.

[10:19] Diego F. Salinas: Sounds good!

[10:29] Alex Stompoly: Stay tuned, everyone!

[10:39] Diego F. Salinas: We’ll be right back!

[14:06] Diego F. Salinas: But have they been eradicated? Because like, because presumably right is like you spray them, they can't reproduce anymore. And then the colony dies out and like, yeah, no more roach problem, right? But if you have to keep doing it, that means there's some that are not getting everybody and like, there's always some that like escape and like, sure, it's like they come in quarterly and spray and it sort of like keeps them but also like the house is old as shit. So new cockroaches are coming in all the time. And it's not my house. So I'm not paying to seal all the walls up. You know what I mean? That's the problem. You know, there's like, like antibiotic resistance, like eventually like germs come. Just one fucking roach covered in dick.

[14:51] RJ Christian: The castration resistant cockroach. Is that the new BBG? I mean, you know, there are those cases, there are those cases of individuals, you know, who have gone in and they've, oh god, what is it? What is it that men can do? Pee. Standing up. Make 30% more money than women.

[15:10] Murray: No, no, no, no. I feel targeted right now. I'm trying to be supportive and I've got three idiots over here not helping me. Fail upward. No, it's the medical procedure. Oh, castration.

[15:22] Jasmine Malave: No, no, no. Have nice eyelashes without trying. Getting your vasectomy. All I could think of was snip snip. Now, remind you, we work and do improv together. I'm surrounded by too many dicks. But, you know, there are cases of men who get vasectomies and like cockroaches.

[15:43] Diego F. Salinas: Yeah, yeah. So there is going to be one of those cockroaches out there that like go ahead and spray. He'll come back bigger, badder and deadlier than ever, but more potent. He's going to come back with his own joker. Yeah, he's going to have his own. Let me see how you like it in your wings are going to shrivel up. Yep. Now my concrete slab in a trash bag don't look so bad. Cockroach standing over me.

[16:05] RJ Christian: Yeah. OK, so if we're ranking these, then I would say I like the beautiful, elegant simplicity of the way Stomp dealt with his past. Sure. Yours like we needed guys in a fucking lab to figure that shit out.

[16:15] Murray: Oh, yeah. And you can't do that on your own. I'm going to rank I'm going to rank stone slab as above chemical castration.

[16:22] Jasmine Malave: Yeah, I mean, you can't I mean, it would take a whole lot of slabs and you'd have to like cockroaches versus mice. You know what I mean?

[16:32] Diego F. Salinas: Oh, I mean, I don't think the slab is the right answer for your roaches. No, but I also I mean, like, I don't I don't feel bad about it, but it's just really funny that it's like they're like humane. And I'm like, I don't think that is. The thing. What about the side effects on the cockroaches? Like they all have like like cancer now?

[16:45] RJ Christian: Oh, I mean, yeah, I mean, that's the idea. So like they're like, yeah, it's just chemical warfare on the population. All right. What about Arizona, North Carolina? What are your stories?

[17:00] Jasmine Malave: Oh, yeah. I grew up with a lot of bugs, but you kind of just deal with them like you also just do poison and stuff around the perimeter of your house. But you're always going to wake up and there's going to be a scorpion on your wall once in a while.

[17:08] Diego F. Salinas: That's terrifying. They're just there. We used to get scorpions in northwest Georgia, too.

[17:12] RJ Christian: Yeah. I don't bother about. Yeah. My brother got stung once. He said it felt like fire and he was fine.

[17:19] Jasmine Malave: It's a good idea that we had ones that were about an inch and a half long. They're like golden ones. Yeah. They're not super scary. And like every once in a while, you like. Yeah. I mean, you know, you shake out your boots on Boy Scout.

[17:33] Diego F. Salinas: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I mean, somebody gets stung and they're just they're just like it's like a really, really, really awful. Yeah. Or did you? I mean, we used to have a lot of mice. And the thing was because I essentially lived out in the woods and when it got cold, they would all come inside.

[17:50] RJ Christian: Sure. And there's nothing you could really do about it. And the way we had the like the sort of like the tiles in this in this room, right, like the the big tiles. And so I could always hear the mice like creeping and crawling over my head while I was trying to sleep. Like the school roof tiles. Exactly. And they sound just like demons. It's it's so scary. And just like, yeah, I'm trying to sleep. And there's nothing I can do about it because they're in my room. Goddammit, mice quit soaking in the sea. It sounds like they're enjoying it. They're not wearing their garments.

[18:28] Diego F. Salinas: My block had a really bad like, I mean, New York City, but my block has had a really bad rat problem outside. And we had some that burrowed into our little front kind of strip of garden in front of my place. And so I found this product that you leave out, they eat it, it only interacts with rodents. So any other mammal that's nearby, like my neighbors, dogs are all safe, but it's supposed to like interact with their digestive tract so that they don't feel thirsty. And then they just don't drink any water. So rowdy. And so this is how I feel about this stuff that we use.

[19:00] Jasmine Malave: Yeah, that's rough. Well, see, they just they get they don't realize they're thirsty. There's no like physical response. So it doesn't hurt them. And they just kind of go into a coma because they haven't drank any water. God. I mean, that's, yeah, sure. I mean, it's the and I mean, theoretically, it's dead in three days.

[19:15] Diego F. Salinas: If you were talking about like, you know, it's like, yeah, they they just, you know, they just dehydrate and die. I feel like that's like one level removed from like, so put in crack into their neighborhood. This is what we're doing, but it's, you know, we're no one's like Ronald Reagan's just not lying about it. We're like Rodent Reagan.

[19:40] RJ Christian: Oh, my God. That's insane. Like, how long have you been putting that stuff out there for?

[19:45] Jasmine Malave: I put it out as soon as I started noticing, noticing that they had created like little burrows in front of my house. Sure. And it worked immediately.

[19:57] Diego F. Salinas: Wow. What's it called? Like rat X. That is absolutely something released by a mad scientist. Also, too, on the third day when they get ready to go, it's the most dreaded they have ever looked. Like you're dropping on the set. One of those rats made way. Many many is looking to cheat on Mickey at that point. And then boom, boom, they're gone.

[20:17] RJ Christian: That's so good. I did it. Her marriage over that dehydrated rat. Meanwhile, the roaches are getting spanned by him commercials.

[20:35] Diego F. Salinas: This episode sponsored by him. Shriveled wings. No more.

[20:39] RJ Christian: Oh, my God. It's called roaches, but it's all in lowercase.

[20:45] Jasmine Malave: What a beautiful two themes. It's a weird thing. Now I'm trying to think of sex. And what's the difference for me? Like, I like that you were like, that's you were like, there's one. There's a B. All right. One B. You're good.

[20:54] Diego F. Salinas: Oh, yeah. Yeah. One B for sure. Like when it's like roaches everywhere, it's like I feel like I'm under attack.

[21:02] RJ Christian: No. And also there's a difference bees. I would like go out of my way to find someone who could humanely remove them kind of thing versus roaches can go at themselves. All the mice. I don't give a fuck about those mice. And I think we're all discovering there's like there's a line, right? Yes, I was. My first choice was not to take this little country mouse and just bop him on the head and end it. I tried super hard. And when I lived and when I lived in a farmhouse. One thing about Sam, he ain't no bunny foo foo. I ain't. I ain't. But like when I lived in a farmhouse, we would get them just like I was saying, like in the winter. And you you quietly went, OK, I get this. I will get you out of here as long as you don't start eating into stuff. Yeah. And like you adjusted and you did it and you made room for him. I'm cool. You're cool. You're cool. All good. Now get out of the silverware drawer.

[21:52] Diego F. Salinas: Flames when we've chosen life is snakes like we're talking about poisonous stuff. I grew up in northwest Georgia and we got fucking rattlers and and copperheads, which are in and watermarks. So you like run around. You can get messed up. We're around the woods and we played in the woods all the time. And like, did you guys have if I talked about snake guys on this podcast before, did you guys have a guy that just came to your school and like just threw snakes at you?

[22:15] RJ Christian: Absolutely. We had one. His name was his name was Okie Funokie Joe. And he was awesome.

[22:21] Jasmine Malave: Absolutely. Yeah. Sounds like a cryptid. I talk about him all the time because he's incredible. He would like sing folk songs about his dog and his cat. Then he would just like throw a fucking rattlesnake at it and a bunch of fifth graders would be like, look out, respect nature. It should be noted that at the time, Murray School didn't have a really good sign in policy for under a bridge. It was just Joe.

[22:45] Diego F. Salinas: Oh, man. Now he was like weirdly famous in Georgia. But but we absolutely like learned how to do that. I mean, basically what they taught you to do is go get your parents. But yeah, I remember like at least twice when I went to like I got a lawnmower out of a shed one time. There's just a big ass copperhead. And I was like, fuck. And I went to like find my like neighbor. I was like, hey, you there's a copperhead. And he just like grabbed a hoe and went out there and like, no, he killed it. And I was like, what the hell? That's not what Okie Funokie Joe taught me to do at all.

[23:19] RJ Christian: I like the idea that it's like the Okie Funokie Joe, like when he comes to school, he says, go get your parents, like stay away from the animal. Go get your fucking dickhead neighbor murders the beautiful snake. I want to imagine Okie Funokie Joe then has a booking at your dad's like office, like right out of murder. It's a whole lesson. All right. You want to get a regulation.

[23:39] Jasmine Malave: Oh, yeah, I wanted to know that. Anthropomorphize these snakes for your children.

[23:46] Diego F. Salinas: Yeah. Well, you know, Okie Funokie Joe's like five step process include like a five gallon bucket, the lid, those graspers they give the elderly to get the remote. Girl, we don't have that.

[23:56] RJ Christian: No, no, it honestly got a rake and gumption. Honestly, it was Okie Funokie Joe's system was like, get a stick. And he was just like, get a long stick and like move them off into the woods and like chase them and just run them off. And they'll go mind their business.

[24:09] Jasmine Malave: I will applaud your school for bringing in someone who taught you or at least made you aware of the inherent dangers that could exist just where you're at. We are we're a spider territory in the Midwest and Kansas City, my part and brown recluses and black widows. Yeah. And no one no one really teaches you what that is all about. And I remember I see I fucking thought brown recluses were going to be goddamn everywhere. All right. Well, they were everywhere. Joe was showing up once a year and scaring the shit out of me. I had I had an aunt who got bit by one. They're they can get around real around recluse because black widows, truthfully, they they don't mess with you. You can also tell black widow is like they're they're like quarter sized and they've got a big but they are obvious.

And you're like, look at that. Like, they look like they will fucking kill everyone and their mother just glaring at a brown spider going, are you are you violent? Might that be a cello on your back? Who's to say?

[25:05] Diego F. Salinas: And it's too late. Looks more like an upright base. A viola. Fuck you. Yeah, you're fine. Ever tell you when I moved to the East Coast, like with still my inherent, oh, look for rattlesnakes and scorpion mentality.

[25:19] Jasmine Malave: Wait, what? When I moved to the East Coast, I was here for like two months and like I went to a house party at a friend's house. Like there was a guy that I was seeing and we went around the back to get into this person's backyard. And there was all this low laying brush. And I'm in Connecticut and my ass reached into the ground, pick up a handful of gravel and started throwing the gravel into the dirt and like brush to like clear a path to the fence. And this guy was just like, what are you doing? And I was like, I'm checking for rattlesnakes that don't live here. Let's go to the party now. Thank you.

[25:57] Diego F. Salinas: Yeah. And everyone was safe because of you.

[26:00] Jasmine Malave: Yeah, you're welcome. All the rattlesnakes that were like just hiding in the darkness. Yeah, the rattlesnake revolution. They were just about to launch their attack on and they were like, no, wait, that one knows the magics.

[26:09] Diego F. Salinas: Now the rattlesnake equivalent of Okefenokee Joe is talking about you. You see a Jasmine throwing gravel. Go get your parents.

[26:17] RJ Christian: If you see Jasmine, go and get your parents. There are a bunch of snakes just sharpening hose.

[26:23] Murray: Connecticut Joe, he's out there. God, the roaches are soaking next door. The snakes are just arming their defenses. The bees are just trying to date.

[26:32] Diego F. Salinas: It's a snake. It's soak itself. Probably just stick his tail down his mouth. And just I heard this snake got its ribs removed so he could suck his own tail. So we did all hear the same.

[26:45] RJ Christian: Free Internet to like the first meme. I remember when I accidentally spread misinformation on that misinformation because I got rib and vertebrae mixed up.

[26:55] Jasmine Malave: Vertebrae. He took out his C3 so he could suck his own dick. I told somebody that like, oh, I heard Marilyn Manson removed the vertebrae. But like, take out your C3 through your C7. Get a little shorter, bitch. There's no more distance. That's fine. Take them all out. I can't feel my own penis anymore, but I got it.

[27:20] Diego F. Salinas: The cockroaches say the same thing.

[27:29] RJ Christian: No, no show tonight. This is the show. Let's just go straight to the bar with Angelou.

[27:33] Jasmine Malave: Add one more ingredient added to the stew, baby.

[27:45] Diego F. Salinas: We're recording the podcast.

[27:48] RJ Christian: It is. What's up? I'm not going back to jail.

[27:53] Jasmine Malave: Do you have any stories about murdering varmints from your youth?

[28:00] Diego F. Salinas: We've been happily talking about it for a while.

[28:06] RJ Christian: I mean, listen, so far we've all reminisced about genocide. Roach genocide.

[28:14] Diego F. Salinas: I'm horrified to remember this, but I remember my senior year of high school I was racing because I was late to a student council meeting because I was the arts council president, and I was racing and I wasn't paying attention and I was driving down Ridgeway, which is this really long hill, and I couldn't see in front of me and bam, I hit a fucking squirrel.

[28:36] RJ Christian: And just to clarify, you hit a squirrel that was mid coitus or you, uh, were just—

[28:43] Diego F. Salinas: No, I hit a squirrel that was just—sorry, I thought we were gonna do more jokes about animals having sex with each other. I missed that. See, I didn't—I wasn't here for the pre—that, yeah, I couldn't do that callback, my apologies. Um, everybody else looked at me like an asshole too, fully fucking traumatized by this thing. Like, I cried my way to school. I picked it up and I tried to revive it with like little pet CPR and I took it over to the side of the road. I mean, not the mouth, I did the little compression to try to save its life, but there are limits to how far. I'm not a freak. If it was a dog, a different question. Mouth on the dog? Very easy. Sure, it's actually easy to do mouth-to-mouth on a dog because you just put their whole snoot in your mouth.

So, because it goes through both air holes. That's right, it goes through both holes. That's what I said, thank you both. Um, and uh, so yeah, I picked him up, I put him on the side of the road. I don't know if it was a him, I can't gender this thing and uh, didn't stop to check. I, uh, and then I cried my way to school and I cried through the whole meeting. It was really—

[29:47] Jasmine Malave: How old were you?

[29:48] Diego F. Salinas: Let's see, I was probably—I was 16 going on—

[29:57] RJ Christian: Many a person has done this too, but I am the saddest girl.

[30:05] Diego F. Salinas: The sound of squeaking. Yeah, we're all with 17 going on now, sadly no more. I'm glad you made it through that trauma.

[30:17] Jasmine Malave: Yeah, I mean, I'm so glad that you brought it back up, you know, decades later. This is what podcasts are for. They're just, uh, using our trauma to get listened.

[30:22] Diego F. Salinas: I was talking—wait, I thought that was our whole career.

[30:27] RJ Christian: Yes, most of it.

[30:28] Diego F. Salinas: Yeah, I mean, you can use it for whatever trauma. Every night, yeah, there's gotta be something. I can't afford therapy, so I just go on stage and do it.

[30:37] Jasmine Malave: What is this like? I'm sorry, listeners at home, you can't see this, but there's this like sassy low-cut shirt situation happening on Diego right now that I have not seen before. He looks like a Latin lover.

[30:51] Diego F. Salinas: Because you haven't been here on Hot Tuesday yet.

[30:53] Jasmine Malave: Oh, that's right. This is my go-to.

[30:59] Diego F. Salinas: Yeah, we all got sexy for you.

[31:03] Jasmine Malave: I don't want to, uh—I mean, you can stay and hang out. We're gonna talk for like 10 more minutes.

[31:12] Diego F. Salinas: Okay, I mean, we sort of weirdly ended up talking about—

[31:17] RJ Christian: Yeah, we've just been discussing like critters. One thing I—one question I was talking about recently is how big does an animal have to be before you like, like swerve the wheel like a madman on your car? Apparently a squirrel is just fine, right?

[31:23] Diego F. Salinas: Like, I will swerve like a madwoman.

[31:28] RJ Christian: No, no, no, just fine meaning I swerved like a madwoman. I still hit it.

[31:35] Jasmine Malave: Yeah, but there's the other aspect where it's like if you hit like a deer, that will fuck up your car. Like, you will get hurt if you hit a deer.

[31:40] Diego F. Salinas: Yeah, but it's supposed to be less dangerous to just hit them directly, the deer, because you could cause way more damage. The only one that you're supposed to swerve for is a moose because that shit's on stilts and the whole body goes through the windshield.

[31:50] RJ Christian: Walk away, boss battles. We were, uh, one night coming home, um, I had been picked up at the airport after a spring break and my friend's mom was driving us back home. We were hit by an owl.

[32:04] Diego F. Salinas: Oh no, I've hit a bird.

[32:08] RJ Christian: You know, in the windshield.

[32:09] Diego F. Salinas: Hit by—right into it.

[32:10] RJ Christian: I was—I can empathize so hard. I was on tour, we were driving through the deserts of the Southwest and it was just a long stretch of road, desert on either side. I was the one like operating the van and suddenly I just hear on the windshield and like a puff of feathers. Yeah, and there's like a smear of blood like going across the passenger side and it was like one of those things where like half of the people in the van were asleep and I just went like, "Ah!" and I was like, "What?" I was like, "I just hit a bird." It wasn't till we got to the like next gas station like 50 miles later or whatever that like I could step down and look and like I took out the squeegee and it off. I cleaned the blood off. There were like feathers stuck under the windshield and everything.

[32:55] Diego F. Salinas: Oh yeah, this boy, he cracked that windshield and barrel rolled off the top. Like he smacked it and he went and then was behind like and gone. Um, but the answer to the question of like what size, like I'm not—I'm sorry, I'm not gonna swerve. I'm gonna put trigger warnings on this episode just so everybody knows.

[33:06] Jasmine Malave: Yeah, but I think like, you know, like obviously like medium size, of course, like medium size and anything that I think we as humans like—I mean, rabbit is about for me, I think where I'm swerving.

[33:17] Diego F. Salinas: Well, also too, we've put a personality on those, sure, yeah. You know, I don't mean to say that like a squirrel, like oh goodness gracious, there's people gonna have opinions about this, but like, you know, like I will do my best, but like a bunny, things we start to like really put a personality attached to, you go out of your way. It also depends what, I mean, what you're paying attention to, uh, how you mean driving, right? Like I've—the only—and I had a deer one time and I had a deer at three o'clock in the morning driving sober, driving home, uh, in Raleigh, North Carolina, and we—I mean, it came from the left, which is weird where I was on like the highway and it came from the middle of a divided highway and I just shit and hit it and it flipped off and uh, and my brother and I were in the car and we pulled over and we're like, "We have to go check, we have to go check and make sure that it's dead."

And like that—I can't tell you the like several hundred meter like walk back, I'm like, "What are we gonna do if we've got to put this?" Thankfully it was—we found it and it had expired and we felt bad and we looked—you're supposed to call the police and tell them, so we did. We called them the next day and we're like, "Hey, there's a body that needs to be—"

[34:29] RJ Christian: The next day?

[34:30] Diego F. Salinas: Yeah, so fully like maybe not the car, but I fully almost face planted when I was going on a walk with my husband and we saw these two little like baby geckos going across the way, like they just like started going right across the way. Um, so I think I don't think about like the consequences to me as quickly as I do being like I am a large creature and that is a small one and then, you know, a large creature at 98 pounds, but like, you know, it's all relative. Bigger than a gecko, smaller than the deer I hit for sure.

[35:03] Jasmine Malave: Yeah, that's for sure. Perfect medium, a perfect medium.

[35:08] Diego F. Salinas: Yeah, if it's as big as Anjali, I'll try not to hit it. That's the rule. Try not to hit the Anjali challenge.

[35:16] RJ Christian: Rating like one half, I'll try to miss it. I'm slamming the brakes and swerving for things I think are pets and that's where I'm drawing the line. I feel like pets is like the—like if it's like the size of a cat or a chihuahua—

[35:25] Jasmine Malave: What about a raccoon?

[35:29] RJ Christian: Nah, raccoon is bigger than something that was an ice cold—nah.

[35:34] Diego F. Salinas: What she thought about it, she went, "Am I putting myself in danger swerving into another car head-on or something?" Absolutely not.

[35:40] Jasmine Malave: Sure, I mean, so you're saying if it's something that might be someone else's pet?

[35:45] RJ Christian: Yeah, okay, but if it's not, what's about size? More about relationship to humanity.

[35:50] Diego F. Salinas: Correct, go right through a freaking ocelot. Yep, just mow that thing down.

[35:57] Jasmine Malave: Are they endangered? Oops, I don't have a lot of ocelots in Los Angeles as well.

[36:01] RJ Christian: Fucking ocelot, get out of the road.

[36:04] Diego F. Salinas: All those celebrities with their own private zoos, it wouldn't be surprised if some ocelots escape. Just hard for me right now, guys, to get my subway to swerve out of the way for every rat that's in the tunnel in New York City. I'm doing the best that I can.

[36:13] Jasmine Malave: I feel like not many rats get hit by the subway.

[36:17] RJ Christian: No, they know what they're doing. They're figuring it out.

[36:22] Jasmine Malave: No, they could, yeah, they can definitely teach each other shit except for the ones that Jasmine has dehydrated.

[36:30] Diego F. Salinas: I can't dodge too thirsty. Oh, I saw four of them straight up sharing a bag of chips the other day, like I'm not kidding. That was sitting around like batting the fucking thing back to each other and just eating. It was like four bros just fucking up some ways like under the A-train, not a care in the world.

[36:47] RJ Christian: That was us after the show.

[36:48] Jasmine Malave: What do you—how high was I on 420?

[36:54] Diego F. Salinas: See, in North Carolina, it's a little different because like we eat so many of the animals, you know? It's like the deer is like, "Oh, that's food." You know, the rabbit's like, "Yeah, it's kind of food too." You know, Brad was pretty good. Like there's nary an animal that my neighbors wouldn't be like, "I'm gonna grill that up." You know, so it's like—

[37:08] RJ Christian: I like that this conversation made you use nary.

[37:15] Diego F. Salinas: RJ coming up in here being like, "Well, this I like on the map of Red Dead 2." Yeah, like it's uncharted territory. A lot happens where I'm from. He's about to drop, "I'll tell you what, boy, now don't let me tell you twice. Now that's good eating."

[37:27] Jasmine Malave: I wouldn't count him more like boonies county. That was our rule growing up was if you killed it, you had to eat it, so that was the—

[37:31] RJ Christian: Yeah, I don't think that roadkill still—that was gun-related.

[37:35] Diego F. Salinas: Not my high school boyfriend also did the thing with the snake where he cut us right by Anjali.

[37:40] Jasmine Malave: Thank you, thank you, special guest Anjali. Yay!

[37:48] Diego F. Salinas: And he chopped the head off of a rattlesnake and then grilled it.

[37:55] RJ Christian: The head? No, the rest of it.

[37:56] Diego F. Salinas: The rest of it. Rattlesnake is, to quote RJ, good eating.

[38:01] RJ Christian: Yeah, it tastes like chicken.

[38:06] Jasmine Malave: Yeah, alligator too.

[38:07] Diego F. Salinas: Yeah, great. Alligator is delicious. Halfway between chicken and fish, it's so good.

[38:12] RJ Christian: Yeah, all reptile is sort of like, yeah, fishy chicken. It's great.

[38:18] Jasmine Malave: I like describing frogs as halfway between chicken and fish.

[38:23] Diego F. Salinas: They're also amphibians and that makes too much sense.

[38:27] RJ Christian: No, I've never had the chance to eat frog legs, but I absolutely would. I had the chance to eat bear stew once and bears, uh, bears fatty. It was in a soup and I didn't eat it and I regret it to this day. It's pretty good. That happened when I was like 16 and Boy Scouts. I'll eat pretty much anything once.

[38:38] Jasmine Malave: Smart. You'll have to be careful to cook bear all the way. Very dangerous not to.

[38:44] Diego F. Salinas: It's like wild boar, you can get, uh, uh, trichinosis.

[38:50] RJ Christian: What's the one that gives you—

[38:51] Diego F. Salinas: Yeah, the creepy. Also, the parents will come for you. They'll get you. You have to finish the bloodline.

[38:55] RJ Christian: That's why you gotta hit him with that, uh, the chemical castration. You gotta eat all—you don't just take out one member of the Hundred Acre Wood, you gotta take them all.

[39:05] Jasmine Malave: Oh my god.

[39:06] Diego F. Salinas: Oh, pick the one thing about tickers is tickers are fucking delicious. That's why there's only one of them left. They got eaten to extinction like the fucking dodo.

[39:18] RJ Christian: I have eaten kangaroo carpaccio before.

[39:23] Jasmine Malave: How's that?

[39:24] RJ Christian: Pachio.

[39:33] Diego F. Salinas: Dumbest goddamn joke. I mean, I just told a dumb joke and boy are my arms tired.

[39:40] RJ Christian: Anyways, what's the deal with that?

[39:44] Diego F. Salinas: They're so tired. Oh, you guys, listeners, thank you. Like this is—we're all—this is just what it's like to be in this show right now. Every second sounds like this. Absolutely just fucking madness. Um, thanks for listening to us talk about varmints, I guess.

[40:05] Jasmine Malave: Varmints is gonna be, I think, me.

[40:09] Diego F. Salinas: Yeah, every time you say that word, you just get closer and closer to being—you know, I already look like him. I already have the beard and the firearm experience and the hatred of rabbits and like the blue jeans that defy leg.

[40:17] RJ Christian: Yeah, yeah, he's wearing Yosemite Sam is definitely wearing thigh-high boots, right? Like he's got on like kinky boot level.

[40:24] Jasmine Malave: Have you—and skin-tight jeans?

[40:29] Diego F. Salinas: You bring this up. This is painted on. This is a very left—like a sharp left-hand turn from where we've been. You're talking about like definitely Yosemite Sam's wearing thigh-high boots. One of my favorite animated reveals is from the early Batman—I know the Batman TV show—where Joker goes to like hail a cab and he lifts up his pant leg and his shoes are not in fact spats, but he's just wearing tiny little black—like he's completely white.

[40:49] RJ Christian: Oh, that's so funny.

[40:50] Diego F. Salinas: Awesome. Oh my god, I love it so much. Yeah, this has been lovely. I think that's enough varmint talk. I'm just excited I'm gonna title the episode that just because I can.

[41:06] Jasmine Malave: Not safe for vegans, this one.

[41:11] Diego F. Salinas: No, no, we're gonna put a little trigger warning up the front of it. Uh, and so thanks to those of you who listen to us talk about not cruelty but animals, uh, and soaking.

[41:25] Jasmine Malave: You just really want to—you just really want to get that in there.

[41:29] Diego F. Salinas: I mean, so the people who are soaking, they just want to get it in there.

[41:37] Jasmine Malave: Why did you say that and stare at me right in the eye?

[41:42] Diego F. Salinas: Guys, I'm pulling the emergency video to end the episode. Yeah, we gotta go talk to Adrian.

[41:46] RJ Christian: You just have to scream one word. Watch, it's real easy to end these episodes.

[41:50] Diego F. Salinas: And well, see, that's it, we're done.