Ep. 467: "Interstate William"
John: What do you think the inspiration for that was?
Merlin: I like what you're laying down with those beats.
Merlin: It's got a little bit of a Dave Brubeck kind of feeling a little bit.
Merlin: This could be the whole show.
Merlin: It might be just you could if you heard somebody doing that you think it's a little bit of what I would consider maybe a vamp You know when you do like stop time like a tap dancing solo or something sure tap dancing solo.
Merlin: Yeah Little vamp right bum bum bum
John: Yeah, absolutely.
John: And now we go to commercial.
Merlin: And you know what?
Merlin: The truth is, now that you've done that for me, I really think it sounds like somebody vamping while somebody like, say, a Max Roach does a really cool jazz drum solo.
Merlin: Because he's playing a Lindrum.
Yeah.
John: It could be a thing where somebody's like under a bridge in Prague and they've got a whole bunch of cognac glasses set up with different amounts of water in them.
John: So it's a little bit of a...
John: Like it's a glockenspiel except with cognac glasses.
Merlin: And glass harmonica.
John: Yeah, exactly.
John: Glass harmonica.
Merlin: I could see like a girl in a surgical mask in a Tokyo subway who has and glass harmonica and is playing well-known songs from video games and video conferencing software.
Ha, ha, ha.
Merlin: Like whatever Zelda sounds like.
John: We've done it.
John: We've decoded it.
Merlin: Final Fantasy, that's something people like.
Merlin: That's a big bass one, I know.
Merlin: Boom.
Merlin: Boom.
Merlin: Oh, cha-cha.
Merlin: Music.
Merlin: Who could have guessed?
Merlin: Music.
Merlin: It does so many different things, so many different places.
Merlin: It brought us together, Merlin.
Merlin: Music did.
Merlin: Oh, my God, John.
Merlin: I think you're right.
Merlin: It brought us together.
Merlin: It brought me together with you.
Merlin: You didn't know I was out there.
Merlin: I knew you were out there.
John: But it brought us together.
John: There are a lot of things I don't know are out there.
John: Oh, so many things I don't know are out there.
Merlin: Interesting.
Merlin: I'm going to put a pin in that because I do think about that.
Merlin: Also, there's a fly.
Merlin: Sometimes I get flies.
Merlin: Oh, you personally?
John: Because I'm Pigpen.
John: Or your environment.
John: You're in a darkened space.
John: Why would a fly want to be in there?
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: Maybe it's goth.
Merlin: It's a dark girl.
Merlin: It's a dark girl.
Merlin: Well, I think part of it is that our neighbors don't take in the trash cans as much as I might like.
Merlin: And me, I like circulation.
Merlin: So I open things I can open.
Merlin: I turn on fans.
Merlin: And I think that's one way they have a means of, what's the opposite of egress?
Merlin: Entry?
Merlin: Ingress.
Merlin: Ingress.
Merlin: ingress they ingress and then i don't see them for a while and then i move something and suddenly there's a you know it's a it's like a not a surf song up in this piece uh-huh fruit fly fruit fly yeah yeah yeah i i like i'm ruthless i'm ruthless john i know you are i have zero ruth for do you have one of those electrified uh tennis rackets
Merlin: No, no.
Merlin: The Chinese ladies at the laundromat have that.
Merlin: They seem to like it a little too much.
Merlin: I do a combination of what they used to call fly paper.
Merlin: So you get sticky paper, you hang that up.
Merlin: But then, you know, you do look like a tramp or hobo.
Merlin: You've got all these, like, it's almost like, you know, hanging too many air fresheners, like it says something.
Merlin: I got that.
Merlin: And I got those little apples that you put putrescent juice in, and that attracts them.
Merlin: One that I've heard is...
Merlin: you put wine or similar into like a bowl and then you put a Saran brand wrap over that with holes in it.
Merlin: And then the, the flies get in, but they can't get out.
John: I've seen, I've seen that.
John: In fact, I have, I believe I have, I've used that technique for, for the fruit flies.
John: I, for whatever reason, I had fruit flies at one point and I couldn't, I couldn't get rid of them.
John: And, and so I did that, the wine in the, in the bowl with the,
John: With the saran wrap.
John: Yeah.
John: And it works great.
Merlin: I think they're an insect of opportunity.
John: Insect of opportunity.
John: Maybe all insects are.
John: I don't know.
John: I think they all are.
John: As you said it, I was like, what insect wouldn't take the opportunity?
Merlin: Are there particularly dignified insects?
Merlin: Or maybe it's like Dracula's where you have to invite them in?
John: Well, it sounded to me like that's what you were doing with the flies.
John: You were inviting them.
Merlin: I might have done something that – I don't know what their ethos is, but it might be something where they, in their ethos, me leaving a window open is the equivalent of a Dracula invitation before I fly.
John: I agree with that.
John: I think there are some insects with tremendous dignity.
John: I think spiders have tremendous dignity.
John: I love spiders.
John: They're not like flies.
John: Never kill a spider.
John: Well, yeah.
Merlin: Well, I mean, I don't have an ethical position on it, but I do happen to believe, and I don't know why, I believe that when you see a spider, it's good luck.
Merlin: I don't know if that might have been something I learned from my grandmother from Kentucky.
Yeah.
Merlin: Here in the Northwest, then, we are covered in luck.
Merlin: You're so lucky.
John: And you walk into their little houses all the time, don't you?
John: So much luck.
John: I do not ever kill a spider, except sometimes I am instructed to kill a spider by my arachnophobic lady family members.
Mm-hmm.
John: Even then I won't do it.
John: You know, I have a very gentle technique.
Merlin: I'm sorry.
Merlin: If you can say, if you're comfortable saying, when you are being this menacing killing machine, the uber arachnid assassin, is it that they want it gone or they want it specifically dead?
John: That's the thing.
John: They mostly just want it gone and so I don't have to kill.
John: There are just some spiders that won't go.
Merlin: And I can understand this feeling.
Merlin: I think I told you this story.
Merlin: One time I had been mowing the lawn at my house.
Merlin: I was probably 15.
Merlin: And I know in retrospect I must have left a door open probably.
Merlin: It's Florida.
Merlin: Who knows?
Merlin: Anyway, long story short, that night I go into my fetid little bedroom and there's a snake in my bedroom.
Merlin: Yikes.
Merlin: And I had such a strong, such a visceral response to a snake being in my room.
Merlin: I mean, I don't know.
Merlin: I mean, you could criticize me for being a hillbilly from Florida because I am and was.
Merlin: There are no hills in Florida, so.
Merlin: Oh, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: No, it's more like Interstate Billy.
Merlin: Swamp Billy, yeah.
Merlin: Interstate William, we call him.
Merlin: Florida man.
Merlin: But we ended up calling the county extension service.
Merlin: Really?
Merlin: Yeah, and they sent out a guy in a truck with a little lasso, like a little stick with a thing on the end.
Merlin: Snake river?
Merlin: I think what it's phrased is, it's just a corn snake.
John: Yeah, that's what they say, but those corn snakes don't look like a just...
Merlin: A snake is a snake.
Merlin: That wasn't Alice P. Toklas.
Merlin: Who was that?
Merlin: Gertrude Stein says a snake is a snake is a snake.
Merlin: And all I know is it set me off.
Merlin: Same situation a couple of four years earlier, maybe.
Merlin: I remember I saw a water bug crawling.
Merlin: That's what you call it in Florida.
Merlin: A giant fucking roach in my room.
Merlin: I was watching Fridays on a very small television, black and white television.
Merlin: You didn't call the county extension about a giant roach.
Merlin: No, but I sure had no problem staying awake for all of Fridays.
Merlin: Let's put it that way.
Merlin: If you're taken off guard by that, I guess what I'm trying to get at is if they'd said to me, sir, and nobody called me sir, but if they'd said, sir, would you like me to behead, snake behead, this harmless corn snake?
Merlin: And they say that like I know what the fuck that means.
Merlin: You could have told me that was a racer or a cobra or a mamba.
Merlin: Now, is that the dance?
Merlin: Is that the Lou Bega song or is that the snake?
John: Black mamba.
John: Black mamba.
Merlin: Well, we don't say that anymore.
Merlin: But if he said, would you like, sir, as an added bonus.
Merlin: For the effort.
Merlin: Would you like me to behead the snake in front of you?
Merlin: I would have said, why are you even asking me?
Merlin: Why does the snake still have a head?
Merlin: Sometimes I think, and this is why I say, I think I understand the psychology of I'm imagining other people have is like, if you catch the thing that scared me and then you just take it outside, it's just going to come back in.
Merlin: Oh, because we take it like Mr. Show say, you take it personally, make it personal.
Merlin: You think that spider is personally there to menace and terrify you perhaps.
John: I think we talked about this many years ago when I developed what I call my gentle broom.
John: The gentle broom.
Merlin: I really need to hear.
Merlin: If I heard it, I don't remember.
Merlin: Tell me about the gentle broom.
Merlin: Well, the gentle broom.
John: Is it a physical technology?
John: It is.
John: It's a broom.
John: But it's not an outside broom.
John: It's a kitchen broom.
John: It's a gentle – it's a light broom.
John: It's a – Is this the kind where it's a little fuzzy at the end of the tendrils?
John: Yeah, just a little – it's just made out – it's not made of horse hair.
John: It's made of – well, actually, that would be a really nice broom, a horse hair broom.
Merlin: I would get a horse hair broom.
John: I've had horse hair paintbrushes for my miniatures.
John: Yeah, that would be the gentlest broom.
John: But no, it's just a regular broom that you would get at the Fred Meyer.
John: Okay.
John: But the technique is that a spider –
John: A spider is, you can tell by the way they behave.
John: They're used to being messed with and they are very, they're very elegant in their, you know, they have a, they have an escape plan.
Merlin: They have, but also like insects, which spiders are not, they're very sensitive.
Merlin: I think the changes in like air pressure that let them know when a hand's about to smack them.
Merlin: Right.
John: So what I do with the broom is I get, I, I study the, uh, I study the spider.
John: I study its, its location and, um,
John: I put the broom proximate to the spider and I invite the spider to board the broom.
John: And I say, join me, spider.
John: You're a broom conductor.
John: Board the broom.
John: And the spider, you know, of course, it has its own plan.
John: But now you've kind of wrecked its web enough that it's like, God, I got a lot of work to do now.
John: And there are ways you can coax the spider onto the broom.
John: So then the spider gets on the broom.
John: You haven't broomed the spider.
John: You haven't aggressively, you haven't hit the spider at all.
Merlin: And to be clear, you're not menacing the spider.
Merlin: You're not like going, like, I'm going to get you.
Merlin: No, no, no.
Merlin: It's near the broom.
Merlin: You've offered, you've given it the opportunity if it chooses to board the broom.
John: All aboard.
John: And the spider gets on the broom.
John: Now the spider's on the broom.
John: And that is a wonderful thing because, you know, the broom, the spider's five feet away from you.
John: That spider could be three feet around and it would still be two feet away from you.
John: Huh.
John: So the spider's on the broom.
John: Now you can walk through the house.
John: You can go a long distance journey.
John: The spider, you will find, is content to be on the broom for a little bit because the broom environment is kind of unusual.
John: Okay.
John: Right?
John: A spider can't.
John: They don't know what to make of a broom.
John: And so while the spider is baffled by the broom environment, you can move the spider all the way across the yard.
John: You can take the spider to the... It just thinks it's on a pleasant ride.
John: It's like, what is going on?
John: What a delightful trip I'm on.
Merlin: It doesn't match the profile of what the spider sees as a threat.
John: Right, exactly.
John: Exactly.
John: And then when you get to the other side of the yard, you can either...
John: deboard the spider by taking the broom and putting it next to a leafy branch and kind of going scooch scooch scooch until the spider goes I'm at my destination I love this version of John Roderick and his gentle broom or you can kind of turn the broom a little bit to the side like tapa tapa and go boop boop boop and the spider will go well this seems this environment is changing rapidly it seems like when this happens it's time to move to a new address
John: Okay.
Merlin: And for, and it's not like the Iraq war where you're making him an orphan or something.
Merlin: You're not, you've already, you may have made him homeless, but you have not made him.
Merlin: You have not, you know, that's one big problem with Dick Cheney is like, I think they underestimated how many very, very, very angry people we would, we would create a nation of angry people with, uh, looted relics and dead relatives.
Merlin: And that made him extra super mad.
Merlin: Even if they weren't mad before, you don't want to do that with spiders, buddy.
Yeah.
John: No, and I think part of it is that I think of spiders as female.
John: I think of all spiders as female until I'm proven incorrect.
Merlin: I do too.
Merlin: I think classically because I'm basic, I think of cats as female.
Merlin: I think of dogs as male.
Merlin: I think of, well, in German, this is true.
Merlin: Like Germans think tables are boys.
Merlin: Dear Tisch.
Merlin: Sure, tables are boys.
Merlin: Yeah, absolutely.
John: But so with a spider, I mean, it seems to me the way that you prove that you are a male spider is that you get eaten by another spider.
Merlin: Interesting.
Merlin: It's almost like it's finally like payback for drowning witches.
Merlin: Because the thing was, they used to say, okay, we're pretty sure you're a witch.
Merlin: Even though you mostly just live with another woman and have the same haircut, we're pretty sure you're a witch.
Merlin: So the way we're going to determine you're a witch is we're going to try to drown you.
Merlin: If you drown, it means you weren't a witch.
Merlin: If you don't drown, it means you're made of wood.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: And that's more than a swallow.
Merlin: Exactly.
Merlin: But same thing here where it's like, you want to prove you're a man?
Merlin: Go get eaten, tiger.
Merlin: Go get eaten.
John: How do you know that this spider isn't just a littler version of that spider?
John: Oh, it's a man because it got eaten.
Merlin: Is it ditto with praying mantis, John?
Merlin: See, I don't have praying mantis here.
John: I had a praying mantis as a child.
John: As a pet?
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: I had the whole experience.
Merlin: This could have been a scene like with Nick Nolte going to a shrink or something.
Merlin: We actually, we did have two praying manti and then one of them was gone and the other one got fat.
John: Really?
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Didn't they tell you that at the pet store?
Merlin: It wasn't a pet store.
Merlin: It was just an Ohio lawn.
Merlin: It's also where I found a turtle that lived for two days.
Merlin: Wait, you got... His name was Sherlock, and he wanted more than grass, apparently, to eat.
John: Ha!
Merlin: Two days.
Merlin: He smelled and didn't move.
John: Oh, no.
Merlin: R.I.P.
Merlin: Sherlock.
Oh, no.
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Merlin: You found Praying Mantis in your yard.
Merlin: This could be a fever dream, John.
Merlin: But I think when we were living on Hawaiian Terrace, I think we had.
Merlin: Do you remember those things that as a kid, you must remember this.
Merlin: There were those things you could get at a drugstore.
Merlin: A kiss is still a kiss.
Merlin: Uh-huh, uh-huh.
Merlin: But you could get those things.
Merlin: They kind of had the form factor of looking almost like a camping lantern.
Merlin: But they were clear plastic things with a lid that you could put insects into.
Merlin: They were mostly for fireflies.
John: Yes, I remember.
John: Yes, although we don't have fireflies in the Northwest.
John: That's a shame.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: We don't have them here, I don't think.
John: The first time I ever saw one, I was 13 years old.
Merlin: I couldn't believe it.
Merlin: That must have been like the way normal kids first see snow.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You've been soaking in it, in the snow, for years.
Merlin: So this could be, like I say, I feel like I do remember a fat praying mantis.
Merlin: It might have just been...
Merlin: I don't know, a torpid, sedentary mantis.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: But it was before I learned about, well, maybe I knew, I don't know.
John: You had two mantises, maybe the fit one escaped, and the one that was left, you were like, that mantis is fat.
John: It ate all of Sherlock's grass.
John: But it must have, maybe it was just, that's why it couldn't get out.
Merlin: I'm going to put a pin in this, too.
Merlin: This is the thing that just keeps coming up in life.
Merlin: The thing where you learn more about something that you think you have sorted out.
Merlin: We've already talked about this, but this is happening a lot in lots of things that I'm aware of right now, where you go, oh, well, that explains what happened in 1961.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: Yeah, I do.
Merlin: And I think sometimes you can't really make a proper connection until you undo the connections you used to have.
Merlin: But I'll put a pin in that.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: You've got a, what did you call it?
Merlin: Did you call it a gentle broom?
John: The gentle broom.
John: And for a long time, see, in the Northwest, people that are from other parts of the world, I think our friends in Australia...
John: are probably nodding along because they have spiders.
John: Those spiders put you in a jar, if you know what I mean.
John: But this is the thing.
John: They're nodding along like, oh, yeah, Sheila, I know what it's like to have spiders.
Merlin: That Sparkle Horse album over there is called Good Day, Spider.
John: But the thing is that people in Australia are nodding along in sympathy with me, but, of course, their spiders are literally three feet across.
John: Yeah.
John: We don't have those, but we do have very big spiders, and they're in proliferation here.
John: There are spiders starting now.
Merlin: I'm sorry to have forgotten this, but isn't there a time of year when you go to take a walk and everything's just lousy?
Merlin: You just walk into spider webs everywhere.
Merlin: Isn't there a time of year there?
John: Yeah, there's just spiders everywhere.
John: And they're ferocious looking, although if you're not a male spider, you're fine.
John: They're not going to bother you.
John: But they're severe looking.
John: And there's a lot of them, different kinds of them.
Merlin: And they're all kind of severe looking.
Merlin: Do you know what is there?
Merlin: If you know, what is it about the Pacific Northwest or your yard in particular that attracts so many different kinds of spiders?
Merlin: What is it about the area?
Merlin: Do you know?
Merlin: Well, golly, I don't.
Merlin: And, you know, one of the things.
John: What has something to do with climate?
John: I'm sure it does.
John: It says here the eight most common spiders in the Northwest are, but first, the common house spider.
John: Wow, that seems like kind of made up.
John: It seems like they didn't know and they just said they don't know what that one is.
John: The western black widow.
John: Okay.
John: We don't use that word, but.
John: That's a not very fun spider to encounter, the black widow.
John: The zebra jumping spider.
Merlin: Oh, I don't like the sound of that at all.
Merlin: Do you remember when we were kids and the phrase they would always use, again, a little problematic, Africanized?
Merlin: That sounds like an Africanized spider.
Merlin: Africanized bees are what happens.
Merlin: Hey, guess what, Larry?
John: I learned how to jump.
Merlin: What?
John: Zebra jumping spider.
John: I encountered them all the time.
John: They do jump.
John: There's the hobo spider.
John: Okay, loving that.
John: Then there's the wolf spider.
John: Rides the rails.
John: If you see a wolf spider, you know it.
Merlin: Are they super furry?
John: Yeah, they're furry.
Yeah.
John: There's the Sierra dome spider, the yellow sack spider, and the cross orb spider.
John: Okay.
John: These are the spiders in your neighborhood, in your neighborhood, in your neighborhood.
John: And what I don't know, here's what I don't know.
John: Spider delivery.
John: If you take a common house spider, the word house is right in the name.
John: Yes.
John: If you gentle broom the common house spider to a bush outside and
John: Have you condemned the common house spider to an untimely death?
Merlin: I think about this all the time.
Merlin: My kid, for my kid's almost entire life, my kid has been one of those, this is by the way, just side note, this is a good kind of kid.
Merlin: The kind of kid that like sees like an injured animal and like tries to help it.
Merlin: Like a bird that's, let's be honest, dead.
Merlin: Like move it off the sidewalk so it doesn't get hurt.
Merlin: My kid is very much that kind.
Merlin: And I am like that.
Merlin: You know, as the person who worries that I've offended the polo shirt that I didn't select for school today, I'm also that kind of person where I'm like, is moving this snail going to separate it forever from its family?
Merlin: Right.
Right.
Merlin: I mean, doesn't that kind of cross your mind a little bit?
Merlin: It does all the time.
Merlin: With ants, I don't care.
John: Just let them all die.
John: I have been thinking about this for 30 years.
John: And I finally now, talking to you, am looking at it on the internet.
John: And it says here, the common house spider has better survival rates outside because there are more insects available.
John: Well, what do you know?
John: Wait.
Merlin: Out you go, common house spider.
Merlin: So in that case, the name is really more of like what this is and where it will bother you and not so much where it will thrive.
Merlin: No, the common house spider likes to come inside.
Merlin: oh um but like our sugar ants yeah but they're dumb that's not where they want to be they want to be outside and i'm gonna put a pin in that too john because isn't that in that ironical isn't that how life is yeah you want to get into the place where you think you're going to be comfortable and you mostly just annoy people and you never realize you could thrive by just staying outside just stay outside pal just stay out there were so many fucking people
Merlin: Where you belong.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Well, OK.
John: The black spiders belong in this part of town.
John: The hobo spider and the wolf spider are both really big and really, really gnarly.
Merlin: That's exactly the word.
Merlin: And the way that spiders move can be very upsetting.
Merlin: And wolf spiders move really fast.
John: And they do bite you.
John: And they hurt.
John: Um, anyway, there are a lot of spiders, the spiders I'm, I'm pro spider, but what I do is I go around the house and I, and I'm always vigilant and
John: I do sweeps.
Merlin: And I guess.
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: This is prepared material.
John: No, no, no.
John: It just came to me.
John: And every once in a while, I go around and I get all of the spiders and I take them on a journey to the other side far away.
John: So that could be like a spider bus at that point.
John: It's a spider bus.
John: Spider shuttle bus.
John: Well, but I've seen some of these spiders attack and eat each other.
John: So I don't.
John: I'm not somebody that's like, ha, ha, ha, let's put some spiders in a jar and watch them fight it out.
John: They lose their taste for coconut, yeah.
John: I kind of want to distribute them out into the wilderness.
John: Yes.
John: The thing is, now that I have this ravine where I'm constructing a system of trails, I actually went online the other day and I was like, how hard is it to get those hand...
John: carved wood national park trail signs that are like they're like this way to waterfall trail i love the national park i've got that i've got i've got that typeface that they use on those signs if you want it well i love the aesthetic i love the aesthetic of national parks it turns out if you go on etsy there are people that are like i'll make you a national park sign that says welcome to merlin man national forest but you could get a like now entering roderick ravine
John: Yeah.
John: And then I could have little signs with arrows.
Merlin: How would your neighbors feel about that?
Merlin: Maybe think about that.
Merlin: Maybe as they say in England, it's a blue plaque, right?
Merlin: This is going to be like this.
Merlin: This was put here probably by the park surface.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: You need to slow your roll.
Merlin: You need to keep your Sprite cans and cigarette butts over here out of the park.
Merlin: John, you had not even thought of this.
Merlin: You could be declared a national park.
John: You know what?
John: It is not that it has not occurred to me.
John: Okay.
Merlin: But let's put a pin in that.
Merlin: I'll put a pin in that.
Merlin: Baby steps, though.
Merlin: You know, they say dress for the job you want.
Merlin: I say put up the sign for the park you want to be.
Merlin: Put up the sign for the park you want to be is exactly the mentality.
John: Exactly the mentality.
John: But I have to be circumspect.
John: Okay.
John: But anyway, starting, not about, not now.
John: See, here in Seattle, there are a couple of waves of insects.
John: And right now, we're just starting what is normally a very short mosquito season.
John: We don't have mosquitoes all summer.
John: They just start to come up in about mid-July.
John: And there's just a, I don't know, there's like three weeks where they're around mosquitoes.
Merlin: Didn't we decide that there's no use in nature for mosquitoes?
Merlin: No, they feed the birds.
Merlin: Oh, fuck.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: I don't want to piss off the birds.
Merlin: I heard a thing about crows this morning and I had to turn it off.
Merlin: It was so upsetting.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: No, no, no.
Merlin: Believe me.
Merlin: Yeah, exactly.
Merlin: That's like parking in Darth Vader's space.
Merlin: Like, don't do it.
John: The COVID research in the last three years has gone through the roof, and now everybody's talking about crows after decades of pretending that they weren't sitting there watching your every move.
Merlin: For a long time, it was just like a human interest story.
Merlin: It was like one of those last five minutes of the NPR report and some crazy stuff's going on.
Merlin: What do you call them?
Merlin: COVID?
Merlin: What's the word?
Merlin: Corvid.
Merlin: Corvid.
Merlin: Corvids, which would be a great name for a car.
Merlin: But now today, people are going, no, no, seriously.
Merlin: Are you getting... It's not just that this particular crow knows that's you in the rubber mask.
Merlin: It's that all of that crow's great-grandchildren will also know your actual face.
Merlin: And how the fuck is that happening?
John: We've been talking about this for a decade, and back then it was... No one was listening, John.
Merlin: They thought it was a funny, funny... Oh, John and his mom are going to go drive around Seattle and try to find where the crows sleep.
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: And all the media at the time was like, a crow brought a button to a little kid.
John: And I was like, that's not funny.
John: That's not funny.
John: Don't, you know, don't dance around it.
Merlin: It's like being excited that a seagull ate your burrito.
John: It's weird.
John: It's kind of beautiful, but that crow knows your child.
John: So like, you know, be ever vigilant, my friends.
John: I see a crow.
John: But so at a certain point, we're just entering in mosquito season.
John: And some people in the Northwest make a big deal of it.
John: But I'm from Alaska.
John: The mosquitoes here are nobodies.
John: You know, you could sit out there.
Merlin: Isn't it cold in Alaska, John?
John: Oh, but in the summer, the mosquitoes are the size of Volkswagens.
Merlin: It's the exception that proves the rule.
Merlin: It's one of those things where, yeah, sure, it's cold.
Merlin: Like I'm guessing a lot of these animals, and the reason I said that, I wasn't trying to sound smart, but I imagine there's something about your climate where a spider can do whatever spider hibernation is, like that they can find an accommodating environment to make babies in and rest.
Merlin: And then they spring back.
Merlin: I bet it's similar with the mosquitoes.
Merlin: Do they hide under a pipeline?
Merlin: Or what do they do?
Merlin: It's crazy.
Merlin: I don't know where they go.
Merlin: It's not just that they're big.
Merlin: It's that they're super nasty.
John: They're so plentiful that they can drain a moose.
John: And all that's left is just the antlers.
Merlin: Drain a moose?
John: All that's left is the antlers and the fur.
John: I don't want to think about that.
John: No, no, no.
John: It's bananas.
John: And so there are times in Alaska and places in Alaska where you can't be outside.
John: You have to wear a head-to-toe netting.
John: Because otherwise you would die.
John: And out here, I mean, in Seattle, you could lay naked in the forest and let them have you.
Merlin: We didn't have screens that we've been in our house for 22 years.
Merlin: We didn't have screens in our windows until last year.
Merlin: We literally do not need them.
Merlin: I'm from Florida, though.
Merlin: I've been set upon.
Merlin: When my girlfriend and I went camping in Gainesville, Florida, and because she's a hippie, we brought Avon Skin So Soft instead of Raid, she said, oh, it's fine.
Merlin: It's better than Raid, and it's natural.
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: Guess what?
Merlin: Not better than Raid?
Merlin: John, not better than Raid.
Merlin: We slept in a Petri dish with a 12-string guitar and about 50,000 of the most aggressive mosquitoes I've ever met in my life.
John: When I was at Outward Bound in Minnesota, in the Boundary Waters Canoe area, there between Minnesota and Manitoba, let's call the whole thing off.
Okay.
John: Um, they, uh, the mosquitoes, yeah, could kill a man.
John: And there was one guy on our trip in particular that the mosquitoes just, they all went to him and he was just an inflamed, uh, like, like it was, I have a photo of the, of his back and the mosquito bikes had connected to
John: They were so close together and there were so many of them that his entire back was just mosquito bites.
John: There wasn't any area that wasn't a mosquito bite.
John: Oh, my God.
Merlin: But they kept going.
Merlin: They said there's still more that we can get out of this fat fuck.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: And he – at a certain point, he just surrendered to it.
John: He was like, you know, I'm in agony all the time, but what –
Merlin: I think people say stuff to you like, oh, smoke follows beauty or they're biting you because you're sweet.
Merlin: And it's like that's really a very small consolation to the excruciating experience that I'm having around the campfire right now.
John: But in this particular case, the kid was a total asshole.
John: And I secretly rejoiced that he at least had this agony.
John: to compensate for the fact that he was a terrible bully and an awful, awful person.
John: And now he's 55 years old somewhere, that guy, presumably, unless he died.
John: Probably still being menaced by critters.
John: Maybe, maybe, maybe.
John: He might have moved to a windy climb.
John: But so at a certain point here in the Northwest, you have to, as you go places, you have to pick up a stick and carry it with you
John: Because anytime you go between two bushes or between two ferns, you need to...
John: You need to just put the stick in front of you.
Merlin: You're waving it around like an unsighted person.
John: Well, no, no, no.
John: You just put it out.
John: So what I do... Oh, I see.
John: People do.
John: They wave around.
Merlin: They flounder.
Merlin: They're like, ah!
Merlin: It doesn't take that much effort and also once the stickum gets onto the... So you're like a unicorn or something.
Merlin: You're walking straight ahead.
Merlin: The stickum of the web is going to catch on your spider stick, the ungentle spider stick, and then that will kind of... You'll see it...
Merlin: Even in the absence of do and then they'll pull it a little bit.
Merlin: You don't need to wave it like a crazy person.
Merlin: Exactly.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Good tip.
John: If you're just slow and methodical with the stick out in front.
John: Yeah.
John: It will gather all of the ones that will.
John: But it has to be.
John: You have to put it up.
John: Because if you put it just at the level of your face, there are the ones above who are going to catch you in the forehead.
John: That's not what you want.
John: So you have to put it up.
Merlin: It's like being a tall person, not realizing that you've got to think about not just where your eyes are.
Merlin: You've got to think from your eyebrows up because that's the part that's going to hit part of the house when you're walking around.
John: And that's the part that you are going to be very, very upset about if you walk face first into a spider web.
John: No.
John: You don't care if there's spiders on your ankles or, I mean, maybe in your shoes.
John: Yes.
John: But if you don't care, there's spider webs on your ankle, spider webs on your knees.
John: You don't even notice it.
John: It's the spider webs in your face that you want to avoid.
John: So you have to hold that stick up.
John: Okay.
John: One time years and years ago, my sister and I were on the Peloponnesian Peninsula and
Merlin: Of course you were.
Merlin: And we went.
Merlin: John, I'm sorry.
Merlin: Where is that?
Merlin: That's not Spain.
Merlin: It's where I should know.
Merlin: Wait, Peloponnesian.
Merlin: Is that also a mountain range?
Merlin: Well, there are.
Merlin: No, it's a war.
Merlin: It's a war.
Merlin: Greece.
Merlin: There you go.
Merlin: Yes.
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John: Ding, ding, ding.
John: The Peloponnesian Peninsula is the dangly bit that hangs below Greece.
John: It's the larger part of the dangly bit of Greece.
John: It has Sparta on it.
John: It's got Corinth as in letters to Corinthia, Corinthians.
Merlin: Big fan of St.
Merlin: Paul.
John: Yeah.
John: So there's a lot going on on Peloponnesian Peninsula.
Merlin: Wow.
Merlin: Great.
Merlin: A lot of history, huh?
Merlin: Oh, boy.
Merlin: So much history.
John: It's where Agamemnon is from.
John: I remember that name.
John: Yeah.
John: So a lot of stuff down there.
John: And down toward the bottom of the Peloponnesian Peninsula, there's one of those cliff-top forts called Monimvasia.
John: And it's a big – it's kind of – it's ideal for a fort.
John: You've got a – it's a peninsula that's connected with a very narrow isthmus.
John: And then it goes up into a big –
John: uh sort of devil's tower kind of um you know what what would you even call that it's a oh like a like a mesa as i was saying like a plateau but a mesa yeah yeah a mesa it's very tall the the the uh the walls of nature's table it's nature's table devil's tower devil's tower you're saying right like the mashed potato uh landmark exactly and it's a boy because it's a table
John: And then at the top, it's flat.
John: And up there in ye olden times, they had built a cathedral.
John: They'd built a whole fort.
John: It's all in ruins now.
John: And then, strangely, there's still a little town where people live, but it's like down on the side.
John: Anyway, my sister and I were there, and we climbed up to the top, and we're walking around.
John: And we go to the little ruin of the cathedral, and then the sun starts to go down.
John: and the sun then goes down very quickly i don't know what something special about greece the sun goes down a lot faster there and i had done the thing that i sometimes do where i was like no no come on let's just walk over to this place where there's where the you know past the sign let's just go past the sign a little ways okay and we'd gotten out and we were in uh we were now we were in this area where
John: we were going between these kind of hedge high or head high hedges, bushes.
John: And it was, I, I bet if you go to modern Vasily and now they've, they've, they've taken all this undergrowth off and they've turned it into a nice area with, with, with blue plaques and national park signs.
John: Yeah.
John: But at the time it had fallen into disrepair.
John: There were just kind of trails.
John: You could tell you were walking over ancient ruins, but you couldn't see them because of these bushes and,
John: And then all of a sudden, it's dark.
John: And we have to get down off of this.
Merlin: Sounds like, I don't know, this is probably a specific Monty Python cartoon I'm thinking of, but where the sun's out, the sun's out, and then thunk.
Merlin: The sun just falls and makes a thunk noise, and it's dark.
John: Yeah, and the sun had God's face on it.
John: And then briefly, it was a little baby, and then it was gone.
John: And my sister, of course, was like, what have you done?
John: Uh, because everyone else is gone.
Merlin: Where have you taken us adventure boy?
John: Yeah, that's right.
John: No, no one is around.
John: We can't see anywhere and we have to get back to the one place you can get off of this Mesa, which now is a long way away and we can't see and it's bushes all around.
John: And I did the thing that made the terrible mistake of saying, well, we can go as the, as the Corvid flies.
John: I know roughly where the route down off of this mesa.
Merlin: You're going to use your inbuilt orienteering skills.
John: That's right.
John: Because we were up on this thing.
John: We watched the sun go down.
John: I know where the sun was relative to.
John: So I say, we're going this away.
John: And she and I head off this away through these.
John: What's her response?
John: Okay.
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: And we get going.
John: And.
John: Very quickly, we realized that Monambassia is home to a colony of giant spiders, the like of which we had never seen.
John: And so we start moving and it's spiders, spider webs everywhere with big spiders in them.
John: And I should have said trigger alert because there are people that are punching out of this episode.
Merlin: I don't normally do this, but I'm looking at photos of spiders in Greece.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I'm really not loving it.
Merlin: No.
Merlin: There's one that's white in color and has one of those big butts.
John: And it can't lie.
John: I can't lie.
Merlin: That's the other thing about it.
Merlin: My brother has a big butt and cannot tell the truth.
John: And so I pick up a stick and we start, but we're panicking because
John: Because this is before I had developed gentle broom and I'm slashing my way through the, was Susan cowering behind me.
John: Like she's, she's, she's holding onto the back of my shirt as I go through like this, you know, madman on the water just crash, crash, crash.
John: She's screaming.
John: I'm screaming spiders everywhere.
John: Spiders flying through the air.
John: It was absolutely a nightmare.
John: We finally got down and, you know, like checked each other for spiders, but it remains, I mean, this, that happened 30 years ago and it remains like a, like a source of terror.
John: If I said to her, the spiders of Monambassia, she would, her, you know, the hair would stand up on the back of her neck.
John: Around here, it's not that bad.
John: They're very gentle.
John: They just want to take a broom ride.
John: And then it's September and they are all the size of half dollars.
John: And you have to have established an arrangement with them that they're not around your front door.
Merlin: Oh, and this is where you're starting to really work through that kind of communication that I think a lot of people feel very reluctant about.
Merlin: The kind of deals, the kinds of – you're lucky if you ever get to make a deal with a possum or with a corvid or with a spider.
Merlin: But like first, you're going to have to establish some contact.
Merlin: Like as you said, John, you've shared so much about this that's helped me so much.
Merlin: Learning about the rules.
Merlin: Like we've got rules about how we're going to do this.
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: We have respect for each other, a kind of grudging, natural respect.
Merlin: But, you know, you're going to have to deal with this.
Merlin: And here's the thing.
Merlin: Running around with an aggressive broom is not going to solve any of your problems.
Merlin: It's just going to make your neighbors think you're a little bit, you know?
Merlin: Right, right.
John: And the spiders won't respect you.
John: The spiders will not...
Merlin: Right, right, right.
Merlin: You might kill one spider, but it's like, well, you think about Hydra, right?
Merlin: You cut off one head and two go back.
Merlin: These guys, you better hope they don't get Corvid in sight.
John: So around here, my local crows have decided that, I mean, we have an arrangement, but there's so much more stuff on my property that is interesting to them
John: that I'm not even really interesting to them.
John: They're really busy around here.
John: They've got a lot to think about.
Merlin: Is that something you can share?
Merlin: Because, you know, you've really brought me around to crows.
Merlin: And in a minute, I'll share a question I've been avoiding asking you about whether I have crows living in a tree.
Merlin: But, you know, so what do we know about crows?
Merlin: Oh, crows, they like shiny things.
Merlin: They're like, you know, the conventional wisdom seems to me needs to really be updated.
Merlin: What in your national park is more interesting to a corvid than the titular John Roderick?
John: Well, there are crows that have decided that they're Cheetos crows and they're just going to – the dumpsters are plentiful enough that they're just – the three crows on this block – They can specialize.
John: Yeah.
John: They're like, hey, we're just going to eat French fries because that's what's available.
John: But crows around here have got lots of little things they can mess with.
John: They're not interested in my garbage.
John: They don't want to talk to me about stuff.
John: Because there are all kinds of little grubs and newts and little fleavers and gorbs.
John: Yeah.
John: And so.
John: And of course.
John: Probably goblins.
John: There's gubbins.
John: There's gubbins.
John: And so they are, like, dealing with that all the time.
John: They're very busy.
John: They're great, as they say.
John: Right.
John: And the crows around here have figured out, and this is something I never used to see, and now I see it all the time.
John: They've figured out that there are some grubs living under the grass.
John: And there are a lot of my neighbors who are still living in that, like, super manicured grass lawn.
John: There are guys in this neighborhood that I see out there trying to make putting green grade lawn.
John: And they work at it and work at it all summer long.
John: I walk by and they're out there futzing with their lawn.
Merlin: In Florida suburbs, that's like a, it's a way of life and a kind of class war is like, you know, you get, you and your neighbor have both, you know, done like the edging to where like on the sidewalk to where it looks like, you know, like a flat top haircut and everything's perfect.
Merlin: And, you know, they're watering like hours and hours and hours and people who, but the class war part is people who don't do that are really like frowned upon.
Merlin: You might as well be parking on your lawn.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: It really does become like almost like golf for some people.
John: Well, and it's weird because I thought that that – I naively thought that that was a thing from long ago.
John: We didn't need to do that anymore.
John: That's what I love so much about the residents of Albuquerque who have abandoned all pretense –
John: And they just have lawns that are made out of white rocks.
Merlin: Yeah, like how hard is it?
Merlin: You know?
Merlin: Well, every time they say, I mean, I'm sorry, I don't want to be that particular guy, but we got water problems out here.
Merlin: You probably got water problems up there.
Merlin: First of all, San Francisco, we need to mention on an annual basis.
Merlin: I've, well, we almost went camping where our water comes from recently, but COVID canceled that.
Merlin: Hetch Hetchy is where our water comes from.
Merlin: The water of San Francisco comes in a tube from somewhere hundreds of miles away.
John: Yeah.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: Yours comes up from Sacto, right?
Merlin: It comes from some swamp area.
Merlin: What a great word.
Merlin: That sounds like it's a very Athens scene name for something.
Merlin: But the point being, we have these water problems here, and we've been at grave water problems for a while.
Merlin: It got better for a while, and now we're back to the grave again.
Merlin: But when you hear people say, like, again, I'm sorry I'm being this guy, but when they go, like, oh, and they're announcing they're limiting the amount of, you know, watering, yard watering you can do.
Merlin: And I'm like, are you fucking kidding me?
Merlin: You're still allowed to use one gallon of potable, costly, cleaned up water to, like, make your dirt hair grow better?
Merlin: It's pretty crazy.
Merlin: It's crazy to think about the scale of that in somewhere like Los Angeles.
Merlin: It's nuts.
Merlin: It's nuts.
John: Golf courses.
John: It's nuts.
John: Los Angeles, everybody should just have a sand lawn with some cacti.
John: Here in Washington, we don't have water problems.
John: We have so much freaking water up here.
John: It's one of our... Although...
John: There have been summers where the reservoirs have gone down and we've all been like, oh, no.
John: But it doesn't seem like a weird flex that people are watering there.
John: It's super weird.
John: And it's the suburbs, right?
John: And every time – I mean, when I walk past a guy my age who's out there with his lawn, I'm like, get a train set.
John: Do something.
John: Volunteer someone.
John: I love that you have this energy and I love that you want this –
Merlin: Or get a bonsai tree.
Merlin: If you need to do something with a living plant, we've got a really nice fig tree that, frankly, the house is almost the fig tree's house at this point.
Merlin: It has reached the ceiling and bent over, and it's terrifying.
Merlin: And you have to walk around the fig tree in our bedroom.
Merlin: My wife loves it, and I'm not allowed to do anything about it.
Merlin: It's a fig.
Merlin: It's not a ficus.
Merlin: No, no.
Merlin: Oh, I love a ficus.
Merlin: No, it's a fig tree.
Merlin: The leaves are, when the leaves fall, they're audible.
Merlin: Go plant it in the garden.
Merlin: That fig tree will be 30 feet high.
John: But what I'm not going to do is go outside and try to act like I'm the US Open or whatever.
John: Right, right.
John: Well, so what the crows, this is maybe the ultimate irony.
John: Maybe it's the ultimate justice.
John: The crows have figured out that there are grubs who live just under the most perfect grass.
John: And somehow I feel by their behavior that the better the grass, the tastier the grub.
Merlin: Oh, that must drive them crazy.
Merlin: I'll bet a grub off the dome.
Merlin: I'm going to guess a grub is a good source of protein for a corvid.
John: A grub must be delicious because what the crows do.
Merlin: That's got to be like an energy bar for a marathon runner.
Merlin: Chong, chong, chong, chong, chong.
John: And so you got all these crows.
John: People are like, oh, crows, they just eat Cheetos.
John: No, crows eat everything.
John: And the crows around here figured out that the nicer the lawn, the juicier the grub.
Merlin: Interesting.
John: Nicer the lawn.
John: Oh, wait, let me get this right.
John: The nicer the lawn, the juicier the grub.
John: And so these guys that are out there, you know, cutting their grass with like a beard trimmer.
John: Manicure, scissors.
John: As soon as they go in the house.
John: Like six crows will go, and they will tear the lawn absolutely apart.
John: Their beautiful lawn?
Merlin: They will decimate.
Merlin: This is not a surgical strike procedure where they just leave.
Merlin: This isn't like a woodpecker leaves one little hole.
Merlin: This is like you're saying they go in, they'll tear out a divot to continue our golf analogy.
John: Well, no, they will stand and work.
John: in concert with each other, and they will make a nine-by-nine-foot... Why would you ever want to anger a crow?
John: And they'll just... And all of a sudden, all your... It's basically like you pulled up the sod with a spade.
John: The whole lawn is just decimated.
Merlin: And then the guy... That's like an instant recipe for Yosemite, Sam, in a middle-aged man.
John: He comes out, he comes out, and all of a sudden... Smoke is literally coming out of his ears.
John: Literally, he's like, suffering succotash!
John: And the crow's...
John: Dagnabbit.
John: They're gone like Batman.
John: Little crow smoke bombs.
John: And so now all around the neighborhood, this didn't even exist five years ago.
John: I don't know what the crows were doing.
John: I don't know what the grubs were doing.
John: Oh, don't worry.
John: They're doing something.
John: They were doing something, but the crows – so now all the nicest lawns have –
John: Plastic owls stuck in the ground.
John: Talk about irony.
John: Plastic owls.
John: Now, there are real owls all around.
Merlin: Oh, plastic owls, because you're going to fool a crow with that.
Merlin: We have those on our KFC, and I think it's farcical.
Merlin: It's outrageous.
John: And also, an owl is no threat to a crow, I don't think.
John: I don't think owls and crows tussle with each other.
John: I think the owls are over here trying to eat rats.
John: And the crows are over here trying to eat grubs.
John: And they also work different shifts.
John: They work different shifts.
John: Thank you.
John: The crows are so far gone.
Merlin: They have commuted home by the time the owls are- The crows are back living in their mysterious tree that you haven't found.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: While all of our owl is here going, who, who, who, who?
Merlin: Oh, grubs?
Merlin: No, thank you.
Merlin: I'll stay away from this nice lawn.
Merlin: I'm going to go over here and eat me up some little mammals.
John: There is an owl now who's decided that every night in the middle of the night-
John: He or she comes to right outside my window and goes, woo, woo, woo, woo, woo.
John: And does that.
John: I bet that was fun at first.
John: 16 times.
John: 16 times.
Merlin: Oh, God, no.
Woo, woo, woo.
John: Oh, no.
Merlin: And I've seen this owl many times.
Merlin: It's very beautiful.
Merlin: It's one thing to hear that in the distance while you're camping.
Merlin: And it's another thing to have it outside your window and the owl doesn't mind.
John: In the dark.
John: And then you hear a long way off, woo, woo, woo.
Merlin: And that's the response.
John: They're talking to each other.
John: Okay.
John: And I'm like, you know what?
John: You guys go hook up.
Merlin: You don't need to keep doing this.
Merlin: Don't be shy.
Merlin: Ask for what you want.
Merlin: I want to put a pin in that.
Merlin: I'm going to say to the owls, ask for what you want in life.
John: You've got big eyes.
John: You can see each other.
John: All you have to do is say that once.
Merlin: Also, it's dark outside, so you can overlook a lot of cosmetic things that are not maybe your special thing.
Merlin: Thank you.
John: Well, you know, that's right.
John: But of course, they have x-ray vision.
John: So anyway, these plastic owls are in everybody's lawn because it's the only thing these guys can think of.
John: And the crows hilariously will tear up the yard right up to the feet of the plastic owl.
Yeah.
Merlin: And so then the guy is out with just hire toddlers to run in your yard.
Merlin: What would actually keep them away?
Merlin: Not a plastic, not a still unmoving plastic owl.
John: The thing about a toddler is in order to power a toddler.
John: And I've seen this firsthand.
John: In order to power a toddler, what powers a toddler?
John: Cheetos.
John: So you've got a toddler.
John: Oh, you're hoisted by your own petard, aren't you?
John: That's right.
John: The toddler would keep the crow away.
John: What if you dress the child in Cheetos?
John: No, what if it's a neighbor kid and you give him a nickel?
No.
John: The toddler is dropping Cheetos everywhere he goes.
John: So the crows are like, hey, a toddler.
John: Like, that's free Cheetos.
Merlin: But they don't kill it.
Merlin: See, this is the thing about a crow, a corvid, is a crow is not going to kill the kid who's the Cheeto boy because they know he represents future foodstuffs.
Merlin: Don't kill the golden Cheeto, if you know what I mean.
John: What would keep a crow away is a yappy little dog, and this neighborhood has plenty of those, too.
Merlin: Oh, but they don't unleash them in that service.
Merlin: I mean, that could be a new breed.
Merlin: It's easy enough to breed things.
Merlin: It might take a couple dozen years, but think about when Sharpays got popular.
Merlin: Those little things fuck each other all the time, made the genetics a lot worse.
Merlin: If we had some, I don't want to say throwaway kids, but if we had some crow distraction...
Merlin: Children for Kinder, as they say in Germany, right?
Merlin: You get them out there, you put them in a Cheetos suit.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: Maybe, you know what?
Merlin: Give them some Kool-Aid.
Merlin: Let them get real jazzed up and tell them they're playing a game where they have to run in diagonals on the lawn.
Merlin: And you get two of them and sometimes they run into each other and the Cheetos crunch.
Yeah.
Merlin: But, you know, something that would like, but OK, so those guys, the guy comes out, he's totally Yosemite Sam.
Merlin: May I imply or sorry, may I infer that the implication then is that people with shitty ass lawns who would get all lit up by their neighbors in Florida, they don't suffer from grub grabs.
John: So what happened is my neighbor across the street, who God bless him, he's 97 years old.
John: His wife died 15 years ago.
Merlin: Thank you for your service.
John: He used to be a doctor.
John: He's living in a big house all by himself.
John: And he's a very wonderful guy.
John: We talk all the time.
John: And he's still sharp as a tack.
John: But he has said to me, like, God, I'm just lonely.
John: Like, my wife is gone.
Merlin: My kids are gone.
John: Oh, it sucks.
John: And I said, don't you have a poker game or something?
John: And he's like, what?
John: No, all my friends are long gone.
John: How's his mobility?
John: Oh, he's healthy.
John: He walks out to the marijuana.
John: So he could get driven to a card game.
John: For sure he could.
John: But he was a devout Catholic person.
John: And he just has a kind of don't bother me vibe a little bit that probably keeps him from a poker game.
John: He was afraid of COVID.
John: And then I said, well, what about the internet?
John: And he was like, the internet?
John: I don't want anything to do with the internet.
John: Yeah, that's understandable.
John: I was like, let's shake hands on that.
John: Yeah, you and me both, brother.
John: But so...
John: He's out there.
John: He's trying to keep his lawn nice.
John: He's not a nut about it, but he does want a nice lawn.
John: He's from the old school.
John: The crows are just taking his lawn to pieces.
John: Every year he pays a company to come out, take all the – Oh, poor guy.
John: Cut the guy a break.
John: Well, so when I moved in here, there was this big, enormous lawn in the front that was lumpy and glumpy and clumpy –
John: and i tried for a season to mow it and it was like i needed a tractor to mow it and so i did the thing where i called chip drop chip drop i called chip drop chip drop is a is an app oh oh yeah you talked about this this is the people who come and give you your uh your the the grind up trees and bring it to you is that them they drop the chips
John: And so you go on chip drop and you say, here's my address.
John: Anytime anybody's got some chips.
Merlin: I love saying that.
John: It's a nice mouthfeel.
John: Anytime you've got chips you want to drop, come drop them on me.
John: And so apparently it's a whole world of like people whose job arborists and the lot.
John: Right.
Merlin: It's one of those secret economies, right?
John: Like a secret chip economy.
John: They're out there chopping trees and chipping them.
John: And then in order to get rid of the chips, I guess it's some kind of thing where they're like, ah, we got all these chips.
John: Right.
John: And so they go on chip drop.
John: They're like, we could drop these chips chip drop.
John: And so they started coming with their giant trucks, dropping chips, big piles of chips, so many chips that in the hot summer days, they would start to spontaneously combust.
John: They would catch on fire.
Merlin: So if it's a tree that in its non-chip pre-life had been, let's say, dry, but what's the word I'm looking for?
Merlin: We just watched Jurassic Park again, where it makes amber.
Merlin: Maybe it's dry, but sappy?
Merlin: No, no, no.
Merlin: It's the opposite.
John: They are so wet.
John: Wet.
John: That the wetness, it's like when coal mines catch on fire.
John: The wetness develops some sort of heat in the center.
John: You're giving me all kinds of new fears I didn't have an hour ago.
John: It's crazy.
John: My mom called the fire department one time and they came and they were like, your chips are on fire.
John: Yeah.
John: And they probably warned you about not getting too mobbed up and chipped up.
John: Well, that's how it starts.
John: First one's free.
John: They said, don't just, you know, these chips on fire is not a problem because they're so far away from everything.
John: Chips on fire.
John: So I probably got 15 dump truck loads of chips dropped by chip drop.
John: And then I was out there with a rake raking chips, which is great.
John: It's so fun.
John: But my 97-year-old neighbor for a couple of years would come over and stand a little bit with a cross body language.
John: He was cross.
John: As he watched you chip break?
John: Yeah, because he was like, what is this all about?
John: Okay.
John: That was what he said the first time.
John: And I said, well, I'm losing the lawn.
John: I'm covering the lawn with a foot of chips.
John: And then I don't have to worry about a lawn anymore.
John: It's just chips.
Okay.
John: And he didn't approve.
John: He was like, chips.
Merlin: Oh, because that'll affect him from an aesthetic standpoint.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Also, it probably just seems a little unconventional.
Merlin: Like, what are these young people up to?
Merlin: What are these young people up to is exactly his attitude.
John: And I said, chips.
John: The lawn is gone.
Merlin: And now it's just chips.
John: That's not how you yard.
John: That's not how you yard is what he's thinking.
John: And all my neighbors thought it.
John: They're like, how the hell are you even getting away with this?
John: You're just chipping your whole yard?
John: These dump trucks keep coming.
John: And I was like, let me just talk to you about the chips.
John: They didn't want to hear about chip drop.
John: Just in passing, that's not a fire hazard?
John: No, because once they're a foot deep, they're not going to catch on fire.
John: And they degrade over the course.
John: Is that true for other things?
John: I worry about cardboard sometimes.
John: You're saying you get enough chips, no fire.
John: If you spread the chips, there's no fire.
John: Now, what you have to worry about cardboard is are there black widows in it?
John: If you stack cardboard outside and then you move it around.
Merlin: I see.
Merlin: Well, if you think about building a fire, I mean, there's enough heat.
Merlin: A lot of people don't understand this, John.
Merlin: When you make a fire, you're going to need different parts.
Merlin: And I think especially men, the same kind of men that think you cook ribs on a grill by putting raw ribs on a grill.
Merlin: Read a second book.
Merlin: But also there's the people who think, and you know what?
Merlin: I'm derailing this.
Merlin: I think that to build a fire, you need something to burn.
Merlin: You need fuel.
Merlin: You need air.
Merlin: And then flame is what works.
Merlin: I think people leave out the air part.
Merlin: When men try to make a fire, they put a bunch of wood in a pile and throw a match on it.
Merlin: This is how it's like ribs.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: You don't understand.
Merlin: No, no, you start building a beautiful little, we don't say teepee, but you build a powwow hut and then make sure there's lots of air underneath and things will burn fast.
Merlin: Different things burn different ways.
Merlin: You get enough heat, almost anything will burn.
Merlin: That's science.
Merlin: But in your case, everything's spread out, you're saying.
Merlin: And are they drying out, John, over time?
Merlin: Do the wet trees, chips from the drop dry out over time in your lawn?
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Well, they do the opposite.
John: They turn more and more into soil.
John: I'm learning so much right now.
John: They turn into wet soil as they decay.
John: Hakuna Matata!
John: Yeah, and then if you put more chips on top of that, then it degrades, and pretty soon you've got a layer cake.
John: It's like you have a little hut inside of a compost pile.
John: Yeah, the whole thing composts itself.
Merlin: Shit dog!
John: It composts itself.
John: Oh, like making its own gravy.
John: And so the other day...
John: I went to the big nursery and I said, the whole property I've done in native plants, but this area, this particular area that I have chip dropped, which is, again, a large area because this is a large piece of property.
John: I said, I'm going to make a garden that uses all the weird Japanese specimens.
John: All the dwarf pine trees and...
John: Super colorful maples.
Merlin: Is that in contravention of the native direction?
John: Well, see, what the native plant people said is your little lawn, your triangle of lawn at the front of the yard, we're not going to deal with that at all.
John: That has nothing to do with us.
John: Okay.
John: You can do anything you want up there.
John: You can plant corn.
John: You could do that thing.
Merlin: People love corn.
John: Well, they do.
John: But, you know, you could do the hipster thing where you build planter boxes and grow your own cucumbers, although cucumbers are pennies on the dollar at the supermarket.
John: Yeah.
John: You can grow them yourself.
Merlin: I don't think they're very – I don't think they provide – it's like growing celery.
Merlin: Like why bother?
Merlin: It's like all the people – People are just going to get it and throw it away.
John: Yeah, they keep chickens and it's like I get eggs at the store.
John: I drive cars that shift themselves.
Merlin: I don't make my own burritos or do my own breaks.
John: I'm not insane.
John: There you go.
John: I don't want that, but I do want all these weird varieties of Japanese pine trees.
Merlin: Isn't it also, I'm sorry, last thing, John, but you're fucking fascinating me.
Merlin: It could also be, I've wondered this for years, when I first learned about the term invasive exotics in particular.
Merlin: which we've talked about numerous times, that there are things that come in, like in our case, almost everything in the Confederate soldier park is some kind of invasive exotic, particularly the eucalyptus trees, which are cool because they're big, but they have really shallow roots.
Merlin: The main thing I remember hearing about with invasive exotics, whether that's animals or plant life, is that they can tend to drive out the local stuff.
Merlin: That was the primary reason.
Merlin: My question to you is,
Merlin: And this is not an idea that has come to me easily or happily, that language evolves, you know, and that is it OK now to say literally when you mean the opposite of literally?
Merlin: And there used to be scolds like me that would say, hey, maybe you oughtn't say that.
Merlin: Maybe you ought to say what you really mean.
Merlin: And then there's meta scolds that say, but don't you know that language changes?
Merlin: My question is.
Merlin: Sure.
John: What does begs the question mean anymore?
Merlin: Oh my god, I'm begging.
Merlin: I'm literally begging your question.
Merlin: I'm begging your question right now.
Merlin: You mean raise the question.
Merlin: Oh, that's fine.
Merlin: Everybody knows what that means.
Merlin: Shit, well, why don't we even have words?
Merlin: Why don't we just grunt and cum?
Merlin: Jesus fuck.
Merlin: Damn.
Merlin: Sure.
Merlin: No, I just, you know, people who should know better, you know, once knew better words, now I use four-letter words writing prose.
Merlin: Do you know what I'm saying?
Merlin: My question to you is, can you be a naturalized Japanese plant, for example?
Merlin: Is there a time where in the fullness of time, it might as well be natural because it's been around so long?
Merlin: Is it still considered?
Merlin: I'm not trying to be nativist.
Merlin: Is there a time, or plant racist, is there a time when we eventually go, yeah, you know, I mean, if you go back far enough, like, you know, everything's a fish that can't walk, I guess.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
Merlin: Or like dinosaurs or birds.
Merlin: You understand what I'm saying, John?
Merlin: Is there a time when you could be a naturalized Japanese plant?
John: Here's what you don't do.
John: You don't plant bamboo plants.
John: In your backyard in the Pacific Northwest, because bamboo is not from here, and bamboo loves it here.
John: It thrives.
John: It's like the- It's like sunflowers, right?
Merlin: They're like corn.
Merlin: You hear the corn growing at night, the squeaky sound.
Merlin: And with bamboo, I mean, isn't bamboo like sunflowers in the sense of you might come back after a couple days away, and it's visibly larger than before?
John: Oh, the next day, you'll walk out, and you're like, wait a minute.
Merlin: Is that really true?
John: That was only two feet tall, and now it's three feet tall.
Merlin: How does that not scare you?
Merlin: How does it not scare a person?
John: You have a plant that grows almost visibly.
John: And the thing about corn is they took corn to Europe from these Americas.
Merlin: Yes.
John: And corn was like, I love it in Europe.
John: And now corn is growing all over Europe.
John: Everybody's got celiac.
John: And they call it maize.
John: Their people call it maize.
John: Okay.
John: But bamboo loves it in Seattle.
John: If you plant bamboo, you're going to come back three days later and it will take over everything.
John: But if you take a, like a, like a Kuramatsu Japanese pine tree and you put it in the, in your chip drop area.
John: The amount of time that it would take for there even to be a second kuramatsu as a result of these pine cones is it is not significant.
Merlin: This is like when my grandfather said there's good black people and bad black people.
Merlin: Yikes!
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: No, no, no.
Merlin: In the sense that you're saying this might be exotic, but it ain't invasive.
Merlin: It has naturalized.
Merlin: America is not a melting pot.
Merlin: It's a salad.
Merlin: And in this instance, it's not taking over any of the subsequent endive or chopped bacon.
John: 10 years from, I'm sorry, 10,000 years from now, a sentient eagle will fly over and go, huh, look at that little section of forest.
John: And there will be 25 acres of Kuramatsu pines.
John: Yeah.
John: And that will be the only place that they exist.
John: And the eagle will go, isn't that fascinating?
John: I wonder where they came from.
John: And then it will go.
John: Give an eagle something to think about.
John: That's right.
John: But it's not going to be a thing where you come to the Pacific Northwest and these little guys have outcompeted the freaking fir trees, which you, I'm sorry, and the cedars.
John: Like this little guy has no chance.
John: The cedars are going to not give it any lighter air.
John: And the only way that they could even take over this small area is that they're going to say, well, this particular area has very, very rich soil from all the chip drop.
Merlin: Oh, my goodness.
Merlin: So you've made –
Merlin: Definitely a national park, but possibly a bespoke miniature, not miniature, I'm not saying small, but you've built a bespoke triangular ecosystem in some ways.
John: There's a little arboretum at one side of my acre.
Merlin: Because your main aesthetic here, your natural aesthetic is wild, right?
Merlin: We're going wild.
Merlin: i don't think i've ever that was a major skype crash big time crash my app crashed it says it's still recording it looks like it's still recording okay so we were at um japanese uh oh you're helping it out with the chip drop soil yeah so so every every other place you know in the in the areas i'm all i'm thinking about is the owls and the newts and the raccoons
John: All the native folks.
John: But in this little corner, I'm creating this arboretum.
John: And my 97-year-old neighbor came across the street after three years ago.
John: And what the hell are you doing?
John: What the hell?
John: You know what we do around here is grass.
John: And you, with your chips...
John: You, Mr. Chips, are not in line.
John: He came across the street with his hands in his pockets, and he looked, and now there's all these little specimens of Japanese pines and maples and little gigas and pyruses and things.
John: And I built some meditative walking trails that kind of wind around through the little trees, and they connect in little –
John: little intersections,
John: And then this trail goes that way and this trail goes that way.
John: And I'm going to get a big rock, like a really big rock.
John: I love that.
John: Like a rock the size of a Volkswagen 412.
John: That'll be a focal point.
John: It'll be a focal point.
John: You've got to find a rock drop.
John: Well, you've got a rock drop and you have to – here's the secret about a rock.
John: You have to put at least one-third of the rock under the ground.
Merlin: That's smart.
Merlin: You know, that's the thing.
Merlin: If you see a pier – sorry, words sound like other words.
Merlin: But if you see like a dock.
John: A deck.
Merlin: Or like a pier like dock.
Merlin: You've got to remember those are, I'm not going to say countersunk because I don't think that's, it just sounds fancier when you use more syllables.
Merlin: But them pilings, they go down under the water.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: Into the ground under the water.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: Letting the days go by.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
John: Yeah.
John: That's exactly right.
John: This isn't your beautiful house.
John: There's water at the bottom of the pier.
John: So he.
John: Is he coming around, John?
John: Well, so he's over there.
John: He's nodding his head and he's going, there's method to this madness.
John: Oh, you made a friend and I said and I said if I'm lucky that there will be moss If I'm lucky there will be moss there will be moss Not moss you put there You cannot you're saying moss that chooses to develop inside of the triangular ecosystem.
John: There's all this moss madness up here if you don't do anything and
John: The moss will grow.
John: Here's a moss is almost like like nothing.
Merlin: I was a kudzu, but it's one of those things where you don't need to.
Merlin: It's not a Dracula.
Merlin: You don't have to invite it in.
Merlin: It'll just show up.
John: It is a thing.
John: It's the opposite.
John: It is a thing where the more you want moss, the less the moss will come.
John: It's like a woman.
John: It really is.
John: There are so many.
John: If you go online and you say, I want moss, they will tell you.
John: Is there a moss drop?
John: No, because it wouldn't work.
John: There are so many crazy stories.
John: If you go find some moss in the forest and you put it in a blender with a bunch of buttermilk.
John: Okay.
John: And you go with your buttermilk moss sludge and you go spread it over where you want the moss.
John: Supposedly, the moss is going to go, oh, wow, buttermilk.
John: Because buttermilk is what it wanted?
John: Does it know it likes buttermilk?
John: I have never seen it happen.
John: I think the whole thing is a strategy on the part of big buttermilk to sell more buttermilk.
Merlin: It kind of sounds like snipe hunting, John.
Merlin: That sounds like a Boy Scout prank.
John: Yes, it very much feels like that.
John: And there are people all the time that will stand in a line in a supermarket and tell you, oh, you know what you need to do if you want to get moss.
John: And it's like, yeah, okay, friend who read a thing.
John: You try and put buttermilk moss on something.
Merlin: They didn't read it in Sunset Magazine.
Merlin: That's exactly where they read it.
John: They saw it on the forums for Sunset Magazine.
John: That's exactly right.
John: It was on a Sunset Magazine.
John: It's like some article somebody read in the 60s and they just keep telling the lie.
John: What you need to do if you want moss is to sincerely and resolutely...
Merlin: Pray that there will not be moss in that so you know this is so interesting to me John because what you're saying is you have to not want it and you have to Mean it the moss knows the moss knows if you say I don't want moss there out loud to the crows the way you try to trick a child or We get to wear Cheetos.
John: Yeah, the moss is like lol
John: We will stay here on your trees, or we will be over here in the area where you are trying to make grass.
John: Nice buttermilk.
John: But if you're like, oh, I made a whole chip drop over here with these pine trees, it would be very nice if there were moss.
John: I know if I sign this as welcome moss.
John: No, they will tiptoe away.
John: And so you have to say, the last thing I want, the last thing I want in this area is moss.
John: And the moss will be like, and it'll be everywhere.
Merlin: God, you've learned so much.
Merlin: Do you think that you could find a job for your neighbor?
Merlin: I mean, wouldn't it be fun to get him a little bit, maybe once a week, like get him involved and maybe include lunch or something?
Merlin: Wouldn't it be nice to have something where you guys could do something together?
Merlin: It would, except he is a curmudgeon of a different sort.
Merlin: He's a Catholic, but he's also a doctor, so he might be able to look at you.
John: He is a different – he doesn't want to sit and – Oh, he's a PhD?
John: No, no, no.
John: He's an MD.
John: He's a real doctor.
John: Okay.
John: But I feel like the amount that we talk, which is standing in the street.
John: nodding and smiling and not even nodding or smiling.
John: He neither nods nor smiles, but he did come over and recognize a particular bush, which he named.
John: I would treasure that.
John: He gave it its actual name.
John: He was like, now, wait a minute.
John: Is that a, and he named it.
John: And I said, as a matter of fact, sir, it is.
John: And he was very content to have recognized the Bush.
John: And I was glad that he had.
John: And I think from now on, he's completely on my team.
Merlin: You don't want to crush the bunny.
Merlin: And you don't want to end up as his caregiver.
Merlin: You could end up getting into My Tuesdays with Doctor-y type situation.
Merlin: You don't necessarily want that.
Merlin: Maybe he could come over a little too much.
Merlin: Like there's a movie he really wants to watch on AMC or something.
John: Yeah.
John: Well, and it's just what he doesn't do is verbally spar.
John: If he was an old man, if we lived on the Upper East Side and he was an old man that came over and he wanted to talk about Saul Bellow, I'd be like, why don't we have a regular coffee clutch?
John: But it doesn't.
Merlin: It's hard to find a retired Catholic that likes to use that much.
John: Exactly.
John: And I think that the television shows that he watches are not the ones that I watch.
John: Can you think of any?
John: He's mentioned some TV shows, and I haven't heard of them.
John: They're on CBS.
John: He's probably put duct tape on the channel change.
John: I think that he's very interested in what Charles Kuralt is doing.