The first time I lived alone was during the year of 2017. I was a graduate student at Shippensburg University. I lived in town on the main street and walked to my night classes.
Before that year, I had only ever lived with a roommate or my family as a child. Being the social extrovert that I am, I was worried living by myself would be too lonely for me. And while at first I felt a bit alienated from friends and family, I learned to embrace and eventually love the solitude of it.
Living alone is AMAZING. I only wore pants if I left the house. All other times I was in boxer briefs and a plush robe. The word loneliness took on a whole new meaning as I found joy in just sitting down and writing stories, drawing illustrations, and reading books in my free time, of which I had plenty. Being around other people gives me energy and joy, but it turns out that other people are a major distraction. Being alone is what allowed my creative side to find outlets to express itself. That year of living by myself is why I started writing stories, which became a blog, and eventually this podcast.
But life doesn’t always allow one to live by themselves and when I graduated from Shippensburg U with my Masters Degree(with a 4.0 GPA I might add), I had to find a job. And if I wanted to afford the cost of living, I needed a roommate too.
I found a job in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania where my good friend Sean was still living with his parents. Sean was happy to split rent with me and for about 2 and a half years we lived together in a financially symbiotic relationship.
Symbiosis doesn’t just exist when two people can’t afford to live alone.
In fact, most people, when asked to give an example of the word, would probably picture a more complex relationship such as the ones found in nature.
National Geographic breaks it down quite nicely: “Planet Earth is inhabited by millions of species—at least! Because different species often inhabit the same spaces and share—or compete for—the same resources, they interact in a variety of ways, known collectively as symbiosis. There are five main symbiotic relationships:”
contest between organisms for resources, recognition, or group or social status.
These 5 main types are helpful to categorize symbiosis in your mind, but what I find to be actually fun is to examine the complex symbiotic relationships in nature.
I watch a lot of nature documentaries and I’ve jotted down a few of these symbiotic relationships that really blew me away.
NEMO
First, lets start with a simple one that may sound familiar…
We’ve all seen or at least heard of the Pixar movie Finding Nemo.
In the beginning of the movie Nemo’s dad Marlin explains the real-life symbiotic relationship between the clownfish and the marine plant Anemone.
the anemone provides the clownfish with protection and shelter, while the clownfish provides the anemone nutrients in the form of waste while also scaring off potential predator fish.
THE GREATER HONEYGUIDE
In Africa there are men who venture out in to the wilderness in search of honey from wild bees. But the landscape they have to traverse is vast. Trying to find a wild beehive up in the trees in such a large area is like trying to find a needle in a haystack.
But these honey hunters have an untamed helper. The Greater Honeyguide is what they call a small brown bird.
The men call to the bird in their unique manner and the bird replies from a particular direction. The honey hunters follow the birds calls until they come upon a wild bee’s nest.
Smoke is used by the honey hunters to send the bees in to emergency mode, tricking the bees into thinking their hive is on fire. This allows the men to harvest the honey with less stings.
In return, the men leave leftover honey for the Greater Honeyguide to eat. That is their share.
Studies have shown with the help of the birds, the men are 3 times as likely to come home with honey.
Other animals help humans forage for food like dogs, falcons, and cormorants, but the Greater Honeyguide is unique in that it is not domesticated.
NPR’s Food for Thought interviewed a researcher on the ground who said: “They’re definitely not domesticated, and they’re in no way coerced,” says Claire Spottiswoode of the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. “And they’re not taught in any conventional way as well. Humans are not deliberately going out there and training honeyguides.”
The story of the Greater Honeyguide is the extremely rare instance where a wild animal works with a human, but it isn’t the only case.
URBAN HYENAS
In the small Ethiopian town of Harar, villagers have used a unique strategy to protect their livestock from predators.
Spotted Hyenas are welcomed by the townspeople and are even fed meat scraps in exchange for security.
Hyenas have a jaw strength around 1,100 Pounds per Square Inch (PSI) or 7,500 Kilo Pascals and are known to take down prey as large as a 1,700 pound or 800kg buffalo. Hyenas are a species that frequently have to go toe-to-toe with Lions in order to eat out in the wild. Yet, these extremely adaptable and powerful Hyaenidae roam through Harar without issue from the humans that live there.
In fact, some Harar residents have passed down the practice of feeding the Hyenas for generations and it has now become a tourist attraction. For a fee, you can travel to Harar and feed a Hyena from a stick jutting out of your mouth.
DOLPHINS AND FISHERMEN
In the small municipality of Laguna Brazil the fishermen wade in to the Atlantic Ocean to about knee high. They are there to catch plump silver fish known as mullets. But the water is too murky and the fish to fast for the fisherman to catch on their own.
So they don’t even bother looking for the mullets. Instead, they look for friendly dorsal fins of bottlenose dolphins.
The dolphins chase schools of mullets towards shore then signal the fisherman to cast their nets by slapping their heads and tails against the water. This allows the fishermen to bring home a full haul of mullets and breaks up the schools so the dolphins have an easier time catching individual fish.
Plus, most fishermen will toss a few fish back to their sea bound mammalian helpers.
All three of these mutually symbiotic relationships between man and beast have something in common: no one involved seems to know when the tradition began. The men of sub-Saharan Africa don’t know how long their people have listened to the Greater Honeyguide bird.
The men of Harar Ethiopia don’t know how long they have been feeding Hyenas and the fishermen of Laguna Brazil don’t know how long they have fished with the dolphins. All of them just say they have passed down the tradition for generations. It almost makes you think that at one point, man grew alongside nature, instead of just plowing it to the ground to pave asphalt.
Planet Earth is our home. We like to think it is just our home, but we share it with countless other life forms. Every single one of us life forms are trying to survive as best as we can. Our initial instinct may be to try it alone, but these symbiotic relationships suggest we may fare better if we work together.
So maybe finish you day with the mindset of being open to nature and the opportunities it brings your way.
I don’t expect you to go outside and talk to song birds to try and start an evolutionary branch of humans that talk to birds for food. But I do think this world would be a better place if we started to view the natural world as a whole as our home instead of just something to tame.
If you are like me and prefer to listen instead of read, then you are in luck. Everything above is read aloud by me for the Who’d a Thunk it? Podcast. By now the Who’d a Thunk It has reached people in 38 countries. It is hosted by Anchor.fm but you can also find Who’d a Thunk It on:
The world’s human population has been growing exponentially for as long as our history books can remember.
The human race hit it’s first recorded 1 Billion mark during the year 1804. It took thousands of years of innovation and reproduction to reach this milestone.
Then, just over 100 years later in 1927, we reached 2 Billion.
And after that, the rate of growth accelerated at an alarming pace, 3 billion in 1959, 4 billion 1974, 5 billion 1987, 6 billion 1999, and in October of 2011 we reached 7 Billion…. and the number just keeps rising
That’s a lot of mouths to feed
The 2020 census revealed that the continent of Asia makes up about 60% of the world population
Africa coming in at a not-so-close second at 17%. But That is expected to change
The rate of Africa’s current population growth is the highest in the world today. It is believed that Africa will increase to over 40% of the world’s population just within 100 years.
Africa is facing a massive population boom and this is just the beginning.
World leaders and local rulers alike have been making plans to smooth Africa’s transition into the heaviest populated continent on Earth.
This episode is about one of those plans. This is about the Great Green Wall.
Let me start with a definition: Desertification
Oxford defines Desertification as the process by which fertile land becomes desert, typically as a result of drought, deforestation, or inappropriate agriculture.
I define it as an area losing all its life-sustaining water by various means.
It is important to note: Once an area has succumbed to desertification, there is virtually nothing we as humans can do. It takes thousands of years for massive geological events to occur that might transform a desert landscape into a region capable of retaining water.
So let’s talk about how desertification has impacted humans: Everyone knows about the Great Pyramids of Giza, But how about the countless ancient ruins and entire ecosystems buried beneath the Sahara?
Harry Pettit from the UK’s DailyMail writes: How humans created the Sahara desert: Farming transformed the grassy plain into an arid wasteland 8,000 years ago. The Sahara desert is known today as a vast, arid plain that is exposed to punishing temperatures and little rainfall. But just a few thousand years ago it was grassy and dotted with lakes.
Today, entire Ancient cities lie beneath the Sahara’s sands because of the desertification of Northern Africa. One of the most advanced ancient civilizations farmed the region in an unsustainable way and now it is a dead region. Those ancient Egyptians didn’t know how to stop the expanse of this desert and likely had no clue they were the cause of it.
Desertification was devastating to the Ancient Egyptians, and now it is doing the same to modern Africans.
Ancient Roman outpost in Algeria preserved by the Sahara desert. An ancient tree long buried beneath the Sahara showing what desertification did to forest of the past.
LEON USIGBE from the UN’s Africa Renewal project: The Lake Chad “Basin” that covers almost 8% of the continent, spreads over seven countries: Algeria, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Libya, Niger, and Nigeria. The water body has diminished by 90% since the 1960s due to overuse and climate change effects.
That Lake Chad, once one of Africa’s largest freshwater bodies and a source of livelihood for about 30 million, is vanishing fast is no longer breaking news. What is new is the unique and complex humanitarian crisis around the basin, which is among the most severe in the world.
“The widespread violence has left 10.7 million people across the Lake Chad region in need of emergency assistance. Most of these people were already contending with high poverty rates, poor provision of basic services like education and healthcare, and the devastating impact of climate change.
So desertification isn’t simply solved by having people move away from the desert. The loss of water causes mass chaos. When resources are scarce, war erupts, and water is the most valuable resource to all life on earth.
This isn’t just a problem for farmers, it is problem for society as a whole… a problem for all life.
Side note: I try to stay neutral on political topics on this show, but when it comes to the environment… I am not afraid to say that I am all for protecting the natural world that we as humans have been destroying at alarming rates.
I don’t pretend to know all the science behind climate change and what all factors into the cause of it, but it IS happening. Climate change is real, and it is speeding up desertification around the globe at much faster rates than before industrialization. Now more than ever, we must address desertification. Why not start with the biggest case, the Sahara!
The Sahara Desert covers 9.2 Million Square Kilometers OR 3.6 Million Square Miles
From Coast to Coast along Northern Africa, the Sahara spans over Three Thousand miles
It is the largest hot desert on Earth.
The Sahara is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean on the west, the Red Sea on the east, the Mediterranean Sea on the north and the Sahel Savannah on the south. The enormous desert spans 11 countries:
The Great Green Wall is the idea to plant a MASSIVE wall of trees at the southern edge of the Sahara desert to stop desertification. It is a GIGANTIC international project.
Here’s what the UN had to say: The Great Green Wall is a symbol of hope in the face of one of the biggest challenges of our time – desertification. Launched in 2007 by the African Union, this game-changing African-led initiative aims to restore Africa’s degraded landscapes and transform millions of lives in one of the world’s poorest regions, the Sahel. Once complete, the Wall will be the largest living structure on the planet – an 8,000 km natural wonder of the world stretching across the entire width of the continent.
The Great Green Wall is now being implemented in more than 20 countries across Africa and more than eight billion dollars have been mobilized and pledged for its support. The initiative brings together African countries and international partners, under the leadership of the African Union Commission and Pan-African Agency of the Great Green Wall.
By 2030, the ambition of the initiative is to restore 100 million hectares of currently degraded land; sequester 250 million tons of carbon, and create 10 million green jobs. This will support communities living along the Wall.
If you are confused by how this all works, well so was I.
At first, I was just imagining teams of laborers trying to plant trees in the middle of the sun-bleached Saharan sands. Which makes no sense, because trees wouldn’t survive that and it would be much too expensive to even try.
But the Great Green wall isn’t going to be planted out where the desert has fully taken hold of the environment. The trees will be planted in an area known as the Sahel.
I’m simplifying things here, but the Sahel is a region in between the fertile savannahs of Africa and the barren landscape of the Sahara. It’s an area where desertification has started but hasn’t fully set in yet.
The Trees planted by the Great Green Wall help by:
keeping the soil in place where it used to be eroded by wind
providing compost from fallen leaves
increase humidity in the surrounding areas
provide shade so less water is needed for crops
and the tree roots retain water in the soil
formerly dry wells along the Sahel region have filled up with water again
The project is planting Drought Resistant Acacia Trees so they have a greater chance of survival.
The first countries started working on the project as early as 2008. Communities all along the Great Green Wall have seen major improvements in their standard of living.
The Great Green Wall provides jobs, not just for tree planters, but because the soil retains more water, farming and gardening jobs are more widely available.
New communities have sprung up along the Great Green Wall and old communities have been reinvigorated. The GGW has made produce more available so people are getting better diets, and school attendance has been increasing.
Conclusion: Africa’s human population is growing at an alarming rate. The problems that the continent has faced in the past, are only going to become more difficult to fix due to this population boom.
Desertification, a threat dating back thousands of years, is now endangering more lives than ever, and its impact is irreversible.
To solve this problem, a massive international project is currently underway and it is called the Great Green Wall.
This massive project is one of hope, not just for Africa, but for all of humanity.
I wanted to make you all aware of it to give you some hope in humanity today.
The accompanying blog post is in this podcast’s description. There you will find images that enhance this information as well as show all my sources.
I have also included a link where you can contribute to the Great Green Wall.
I am not sponsored by The Great Green Wall. This is simply a project I feel very passionate about. It is a very beneficial project for saving the natural world and bringing nations together in the face of adversity. If any of you feel the same way, please help any way you can.
Virtually everyone listening to this has played a game against a computer at least once in their life time.
Whether it be a simple game of checkers or a high definition $60 video game you have been trying to beat for weeks. Humans play computers all the time. And we’ve been doing it for decades.
At first, we humans marveled at our ability to defeat our own creation on whatever game we chose.
But we kept improving our computers and that make playing against them more challenging and entertaining.
This trend continued until a pivotal moment occurred back in 2017
GO: Now allow me to shift your attention to a game you may never have heard of: Go.
The game GO is a much older creation of mankind than computers. So old that it’s origins are unknown, but it is believed to be over 2,500 years old. With the earliest written account dating back to 548 BCE in China.
It is an elegant game. They say the rules are so simple, it could probably be taught to intelligent alien life. But that doesn’t mean it is easy
Go is the most complex game devised by mankind. It has 10 to the power of 80 possible outcomes.
For a reference, some games much more familiar to western listeners:
Checkers has 10 to the power of 20 possible outcomes
And the game of chess only has 10 to the power of 40 outcomes.
HBO’s Vice News
In multiple Asian countries Go Officials test young children’s aptitude at the game. If a child shows enough promise, they are taken to special institutes where the children study and play Go as a full time career.
Professional Go players may become state sponsored and can be payed handsomely for their prowess.
This game has had entire cultures dedicate countless lives to becoming better at playing it for hundreds of years.
After thousands of years, millions of players, and possibly the most effort spent to perfect any kind of game play by humankind….
In May of 2017, an AI called AlphaGo was pitted against the world champion GO player.
The 19 year old Kie Je from Go’s Birthplace, China, was defeated 3 games in a row by an Artificial Intelligence created by Google.
Thousands of years of human knowledge was accumulated by a computer in a matter of days. Then that computer executed that knowledge flawlessly to beat the best human Go player in history.
Google’s Deep Mind project created AlphaGo to learn. They taught the AI the rules to the game and then made it play against itself millions of times all at once. After a few short days of learning how to play Go from scratch (no institutes, no ancient techniques) AlphaGo had become the greatest player of the game.
The Chinese Government was so infuriated by the fact that their champion was being defeated by a product from an American company, that they banned the live stream after the first game.
But China wasn’t the only culture to be shocked by the outcome. To many in the Go Community, this was a devastating blow. The game itself has lost many players. The collective human motivation to keep playing Go took a hit.
In the years since Kie Je’s loss in 2017 there has been a drop in the number of people willing to practice the game.
If a computer program can beat arguably the greatest player of all time after just a few days of existing, then what is the point?
Why waste any more resources on a battle that human kind will surely lose? What if they let AlphaGo practice for months or years?
As humans, We’ll never be able to catch up.
But playing a game isn’t always just about winning or losing.
As I said earlier, Although AlphaGo was the most interesting event in Game AI history, it definitely was not the first time humans used computers to play games.
A man who calls himself Tom Seven created a much less sophisticated AI than AlphaGo for a research paper he was writing.
Tom Seven’s AI named SIGBOVIK 2013 was designed to play Nintendo Entertainment System (or NES) games like Super Mario. With all the games the NES had, there were a lot of different scenarios that SIGBOVIK 2013 ran through.
You can watch his videos on YouTube and watch this algorithm work its way through different games through trial and error, trying every single option it could. It is intriguing to watch.
The most notable scenario for me was when SIGBOVIK was tasked with playing Tetris.
====Audio clip 1===Top Seven said :”Playing Tetris well requires some thinking ahead and this algorithm does not think very far ahead.”
Then SIGBOVIK tested out the Pause feature in the middle of a game.
======Audio clip 2=== “there it was pausing the game for no reason”
SIGBOVIK 2013 realizes it cannot win. It is a learning AI, but it isn’t as advanced as what Google’s Deep Thought Project can create. SIGBOVIK 2013 cannot win this game of Tetris. So what does it do?
======Audio clip 3=====”Fast Forward a bit to see how this all ends. It’s not good. So now it is almost done and it pauses the game. Because as soon as he un-pauses he will lose, and really the only winning move is not to play. Thank you.”
SIGBOVIK 2013 decided that instead of losing, it would just pause the game indefinitely. It gave up. It quit instead of going on.
Some saw this as comical that the poor little AI just decided to give up, but I saw it as tragic.
Morbid even.
And while human beings have done their fair share of giving up, we also have something called hope.
When AI is given a task like Tetris or Go, and is then told Win=Good and Lose=Bad, it will show great intelligence in accomplishing a win.
But when the odds are stacked so that an AI cannot win, the AI simply pauses the game, refusing to play. It gives up.
THAT is the difference between Human intelligence and Artificial Intelligence.
Some players of Go may have given up their dream of being the next best player of the most complex board game, but there are many other players who continue to perfect their play style regardless of AlphaGo’s shocking accomplishment.
We have hope. Humans will keep trying even in the face of unsurmountable adversity.
Humans may find an unforeseen opportunity in the face of the impossible to overcome an obstacle.
Where an AI will simply give up.
Kie Je made a statement after he lost his match with AlphaGo: “With AlphaGo, I think my understanding of not only the game of Go, but life, has changed.”
His words are left up to interpretation, but I like to think it means he isn’t giving up.
Hope you enjoyed my nerdy pep talk there. I’ve included the accompanying blog post in the description if you prefer to read this podcast. I’ve also included my sources there.
Thanks for listening Who’d a Thunkers! Until next week.
Welcome back Who’d a Thunkers to the second half of my Falun Gong story. Last week I went over how I came across this story via Reddit and the rabbit hole it took me down. I also went over ABC’s report on Falun Gong. But this episode, this half of the story, contains all the juiciest bits.
Remember: Falun Gong is also referred to as Falun Dafa.
The next source I want to cover is from the Falun Gong themselves, the Falun Dafa Information Center Youtube Channel. They posted a video of their own practitioners being interviewed about their “spiritual movement” as they call it. In the interviews they said:
the exercises made them experience unique energy in their bodies.
One woman said her first exercise made her feel very relaxed and afterward she felt her footsteps were lighter sort of like a floating sensation
They said they weren’t asked for money, nor were they pressured to come back for the next exercises. No one asked for their contact info, rather they found the practitioners to be laid back and welcoming.
One of the recurring themes in their interviews is that everyone in Falun Gong is very kind and that is due to the practice’s requirement that all practitioners better themselves and put others before their own self interests.
I must say this video was sort of compelling. It made me want to try their exercises, but then
The Practitioners talked about the opposition their faith is up against, namely the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
One woman said that she and her husband set up an advocacy project (she didn’t elaborate on what kind of project), but it was for Falun Gong. They invited a number of other followers to come to their house to meet and discuss the project. Later that night they found a VM on their landline. The VM was an audio recording of their meeting. They soon realized that everyone at the meeting got a similar VM. This couple called the FBI (). They explained the situation to the FBI who promptly asked if the married couple had any children. They responded by saying NO, and the FBI agent said: “good, because you are going up against a giant.”
The practitioners say the Falun Gong movement protests in peaceful ways only.
And that the CCP used anti-Falun Gong propaganda to discredit and shame them. This propaganda was everywhere for a long time and was used to justify the CCP’s arrest and detention of bus loads of Practitioners in broad daylight.
Keep in mind, during this video, the interviewer and interviewees were both members of Falun Gong.
There video ended with this message: For the past 20 years, the Chinese Communist Party has conducted a global campaign to silence and demonize Falun Gong around the world. – Millions of people who practice Falun Gong have been imprisoned, tortured, and even killed in China. – Despite the atrocities and abuse, tens of millions continue to practice Falun Gong throughout China, and in over 90 countries around the world, upholding its core tenets of; Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance.
Lastly I’d like to explain JJ McCullough’s take on Falun Gong and China:
He describes this as a propaganda war that involves the public itself. In this propaganda war, there is no land being fought over. As a war of ideologies, our public opinion is the battle ground.
JJ says this conflict is “morally ambiguous and anyone who tells you otherwise is lying.”
The reason I liked JJ’s opinion the most was because he didn’t choose sides. He starts his video by pointing all the reasons he doesn’t like the Chinese Communist Party (their handling of Covid-19 Pandemic, oppression of Hong Kong, support of Regimes like North Korea, and their oppression of their own people).
But then JJ says “Falun Gong is not a good guy either. [They] are a cult straight up.”
This is JJ McCullough from the Washington Post.
JJ went in to detial about Falun Gong’s spiritual beliefs:
Master Li is an interdimensional being with super natural powers
He placed a magical force inside all of our abdomens called the Falun. It is represented as the image used for this episode. It is a circular symbol with a Swastika in the middle and surrounding the Swastika are yin and yang symbols.
Before you go connecting Falun Gong with Nazis, let me tell you that in the ancient Indian language of Sanskrit, swastika means “well-being”. The symbol has been used by Hindus, Buddhists and Jains for millennia. Nazi’s stole the Swastika symbol… they didn’t create it.
The Falun allows humans to harness all of the universe’s energy which is known as Gong.
Depending on how the Falun rotates in our stomachs, the positive energy of the universe, the Gong, is either being absorbed by us, or is being given by us.
In order for people to properly harness this Gong energy, they must do the meditation and breathing exercises.
Master Li shows his practitioners how to do these exercises via his many books, videos, and mandatory 9 day seminars…
And the Master promises his followers super-human levels of happiness, health, and wealth if they prove their dedication to Falun Dafa.
Master Li is waited on hand and foot at his 400 acre compound in upstate NY. His followers basically believe he is god.
The 400 acre compound known as Dragon Springs.
His followers even allow Master Li to pick who they will be married to… but no gay love is tolerated.
Now I am fascinated by cults, as I think most people are. I’ve heard all about Scientology, NXIUM, etc. .. but why haven’t I ever heard about Falun Gong?
Well apparently that is due to Master Li’s vast propaganda infrastructure. Like a lot of cults, Falun Gong uses its most devoted followers as free labor. This free labor is put to use creating the Epoch Times, China Uncensored, Edge of Wonder, and other propaganda/media outlets to obscure Falun Gong’s public image and to sway public opinion.
I’ve already said that Master Li and Falun Gong hate the Chinese government because China kicked them out of their country, but that’s not the only reason. I said how Master Li hates “race-mixing” already, but that applies to entire governments.
The idea of a communist china offends Master Li because he believes that every race (Caucasian, African, Asian, Latino, etc.) was created by a different god. Therefore the idea of a European political ideology being implemented in an Asian country is evil and offensive to Master Li…
Master Li is very xenophobic. He believes that all the races of the world should stay completely separate and never cross-contaminate with each other. That’s why he doesn’t like mixed race people. He was quoted in 1996 saying that mixed race people are “physically and intellectually incomplete.”
He and his practitioners believe that in the afterlife, all races will go to our own planets and be a lot happier than we are here on earth, all intermingling.
Master Li believes the rulers of the Chinese Communist Party are demons from Hell sent to disrupt the universe. He believes the ideal china is one that is devoid of all foreign ideologies… that includes modern medicine, and modern science.
One of the main themes surrounding Falun Gong’s propaganda is that the Chinese government captures Falun Gong practitioners to kill them and harvest their organs. I don’t know if this is true, as China has had some sketchy stories come out about them harvesting death row inmates organs, but regardless, Falun Gong’s stance on the organ harvesting has become a conspiracy theory type stance…
I know. This story has Cults, oppressive regimes, AND conspiracy theories…. it is like the Jackpot of Who’d a Thunk it episodes.
The Falun Gong believe that their meditation and breathing exercises make their organs extra strong and that is why the Chinese Government targets them…
To their credit, Falun Gong did in fact suffer under the Chinese Communist Party. The imprisonment and torture of Falun Gong practitioners is well documented. They aren’t making that up.
But the organ harvesting conspiracy theory hasn’t been proven nor has it been investigated by any reputable source. So chances are that it is not true.
Just as a little tip, if you are reading an article about China and you see something about systemic organ harvesting. That is a dead give away that what you are reading is just cult propaganda, or most likely so.
Their propaganda is making such progress in western countries, namely the USA because the Falun Gong message of Communism is bad and China is a force for evil in the world syncs up nicely with conservatives.
But the issue is that Falun Gong don’t believe the CCP is bad because they’ve objectively analyzed their political policies, but they literally believe the CCP is bad because it is being run by Evil Demons sent from hell to send the world in to Chaos….
So please, to my conservative friends out there: don’t be duped by cult propaganda. They honestly believe the people in the Chinese Government are demons, therefore Falun Gong’s standard for evidence in the “news” they spew out is very low… Just because they are pro-trump and anti-china doesn’t mean you share all the same views.
the latest conspiracy theory the Epoch Times has pushed on their readers is that China created Covid-19 on purpose as a weapon. These stories and a documentary they made had so little evidence to back their claims and included so many debunked theories that Facebook flagged them as misinformation.
Also, Falun Gong sees Trump as a divine angel sent from heaven to destroy Communism. They think he is the last nail in the communist coffin.
I wanted to share this. As I was writing about Epoch Times, I went back to JJ’s video and an annoying Epoch Times ad played. It started with the one actor saying “I can’t wait until I get to experience real communism in America.” Then the Epoch Times favorite news anchor guy came on the screen and said “Has this ever happened to you and you didn’t know how to respond? Now there’s hope. Subscribe to Epoch Times for real news” … this is fear mongering horse crap…
In Canada, the Epoch Times has gone so far as to deliver news papers to people who didn’t sign up for it and didn’t want it….
This is the unwanted newspaper that claims the Chinese Government manufactured Covid-19.
JJ concluded by saying that the idea of Conservative Americans being swayed by an Asian cult sounds bonkers, but there is actually precedence for it. In the 1970’s a cult known as the Moonies came to America. Lead by Reverend Moon who was cast out of North Korea, the Moonies swayed right-wing America on policy. Reverend Moon was a big supporter of Nixon, gun rights, and anti-communism. Western civilization allied with the Moonies because they were both anti-communism, but that was a mistake. The Moonies were an oppressive cult that sexually and physically abused their followers. And the Reverend Moon was found out as a financial crook.
So we as the public have heard a lot about China over the past couple of decades because they are quickly becoming the next world power. And that is in direct conflict with the current world power that being The USA. But now our news about china is being muddled down with propaganda from a cult that doesn’t bother to find the truth. Their rationale is that the Chinese Government are demons so why bother with the truth… That’s why I think it is SO important for you all to be educated on this subject. Know the difference between actual news on China and what this self proclaimed God wants you to believe.
Falun Gong is weaseling their way in to the conservative mindset, particularly in the US. Even though I don’t consider myself in line with the Liberal or Conservative side of the country, I do recognize they are the two major powers governing our country and I hate seeing either side getting in to bed with a delusional cult. The enemy of my enemy is not always my friend.
That is the end of my Falun Gong story, but remember this is ongoing, so keep an eye out for how this all plays out. If you prefer to read my stories I have included the link to the accompanying blog post in the description.
Thanks for listening Who’d a Thunkers. Until next week.
This topic lead me down a unique rabbit hole. Most episodes of this podcast is me finding a topic I find interesting.
usually something non-divisive like the song Rainbow Connection or at least something in the past like stories from WW2 that aren’t currently up for debate
Then, to turn that topic in to a podcast I research… I watch YouTube videos, read Wikipedia, and a few articles from reputable news sources about that topic. That’s it. That is the recipe I use for the Who’d a Thunk it Podcast…. But this topic, for this episode is different… this topic is current and is on-going.
Now, I follow a reddit page that is all about Hong Kong’s struggle against the Chinese Communist Party. I saw a post that talked about the 3 T’s (Tibet, Taiwan, and Tiananmen – 3 Events, 3 stains on the Chinese Communist Party’s reputation and history that they will not talk about). I recognized all 3 T’s and understood why they would be protested by the Chinese Government. But In the comment section someone mentioned the 2 C’s (I found out they stand for Cults and Criticism).
Now I understand why Criticism would be on the list of things China doesn’t allow with China’s president banning something as trivial as Winnie the Pooh because someone pointed out that he held a resemblance to Disney’s honey eating bear…. , but CULTS?! What story is behind the connection between the CCP and cults? Those are like two of my favorite things to gossip about: Oppressive Communist Regimes and Cults. Now on this Reddit post I’m finding out the two are connected via China?! !!! I had to dig deeper.
The Reddit post.
First I watched a 30 minute ABC news story that was interesting, but something in the back of my head said they were tip toeing around something. Like they were afraid to go deeper.
So next I watched a video from Falun Gong themselves titled “In Their Own Words.” I thought: alright, sounds like they are trying to give an un-edited type of perspective on their own group. I’ll give it a shot. It featured people from New York saying how nice the practice is, how much it made their lives better, and how evil the CCP is… but there was ZERO talk about the group’s spiritual beliefs and of course, it had that propaganda stench to it… like they all were pushing something on the viewer.
Then, unsatisfied that I had NOT gotten to the meat and potatoes of the subject::: the source I typically look for, that being the the unbiased, yet, interested perspective… , I started reading article after article. Each story either tried telling me how innocent the Falun Gong people were and how evil CCP was OR, every other article just told me how crazy Falun Gong was and how China isn’t that bad…. it was obvious I had stumbled upon something rather big. I stumble upon a battle of sorts that had permeated the internet. The worlds news source was riddled with mostly biased stories, and hardly any middle-of-the-Road takes on the Falun Gong VS Chinese Communist Party’s debacle.
That’s when I clicked on the 19 minute long YouTube video that looked the least professional… Titled: “This Chinese Cult is Not Your Friend” – by J.J. McCullough – He is this Canadian guy, like full-on Canadian with the “A-Boot” pronunciation and everything. J.J. McCullough’s opinion on Falun Gong and the CCP most aligned with my own, and it turns out he works for the Washington Post.
I just wanted to share this process in particular because it was a VERY different experience from most of of the episodes that I do. This episode is about an on-going Propaganda war between a successful international Cult and a communist government quickly becoming the next world power…
Normally I would arrange the information I got from each source in any order I saw fit, as to construct a narrative. But because this topic is ongoing (because history hasn’t yet etched this story’s narrative in to stone yet, with a nice ending everyone can agree on), I’ve decided to just give the information in the same order as I consumed each news source. There won’t be a set narrative. This won’t be a nice story with a beginning and end, and I chose to do that so you the listener can form your own opinion.
First let me begin with Google’s definition of a Cult:
a system of religious veneration and devotion directed toward a particular figure or object. –
a relatively small group of people having religious beliefs or practices regarded by others as strange or sinister.
a misplaced or excessive admiration for a particular person or thing.
I bring up this definition because Falun Gong is widely regarded as a Cult.
The ABC’s Foreign Correspondent report gave a good background on the Falun Gong:
Started in China in 1992 – based on traditional meditation and breathing exercises called Qi Gong. (chee – gong).
When I was Looking in to the exercises myself, I thought: I’d be willing to try them. They seem beneficial and are an ancient practice pasted down by generations to help heal people. I imagine they help alleviate stress… But Falun Gong is different from the Qi Gong exercises.
The leader of Falun Gong added a supernatural layer to the Qi Gong meditation.
The Leaders name is Li Hongzhi (Lee Hong-Shuh) promises his followers will be able to return to heavenly kingdoms where they once existed before and supposedly teaches his followers how to levitate.
By the end of the 1990’s Falun Gong had 10’s of millions of followers. The Chinese Communist Party saw that Li Hongzhi’s movement/cult was commanding more power from the Chinese people than the government and basically tried to shut down Falun Gong.
The Chinese Government took 10’s of thousands of Falun Gong members and placed them in to “Re-Education camps” where they were locked up indefinitely. The CCP wanted all members to renounce their new faith.
The Chinese Government labeled Falun Gong as an evil mind-controlling cult and to combat it…. they locked Falun Gong practitioners all up in camps, demanded they all act with complete obedience toward the government, and basically the Chinese government acted like a cult themselves…Those are ABC’s words.
When the Chinese government started cracking down on his movement, Li Hongzhi got the heck out of dodge. In 1997 he became a US citizen and in 1998 moved to New York State.
Master Li got to work setting up a retreat in a rural area; Deer Park, NY. It has been over 2 decades since the Falun Gong leadership moved to the US
Today you can see practitioners meditating/exercising in parks, usually with yellow shirts and coats on in Upstate New York. They Believe that this meditating/exercising improves health of the mind and body.
BUT One of the main criticisms of Falun Gong is that it encourages its practitioners to rely solely on its exercises and leader for their health. Some practitioners are convinced they don’t need western medicine, and therefore they find themselves in an early grave.
ABC interviewed an Australian family who’s mother passed away from a stroke due to high blood pressure. Her mother was on medication, but when she joined Falun Gong she stopped the medication. Her daughter said “it would have taken 2 tablets a day and she would still be with us now.”
ABC interviewed Falun Gong’s VP who stated that going to the doctor is not a forbidden thing within their Spiritual Movement. If someone doesn’t go to the doctor, that is their own choice.
However, former members of Falun Gong described a social pressure not to seek out Western Medicine, as it was shamed within the Falun Gong community.
Personally I understand the VP of Falun Gong’s logic: each individual’s actions are their own choice. That keeps them out of legal trouble. … but
Let me read another definition:
Other former members described the atmosphere at Falun Gong compounds like Dragon Springs in upstate NY, as oppressive.
Dragon Springs
There is a Belief that Master Li can read everyone’s minds at all times and that he “knows” aliens walk among us.
Master Li also Believes that “race mixing” humans is an Alien plot to drive humanity farther from the gods. So therefore, to Falun Gong, bi-racial people are demons, or at the very least inferior.
Then ABC went in depth on Falun Gong’s political connections. Namely their support for the Trump Administration.
Donald Trump has been famously tough on China. That has been a major theme in the Trump administration. Falun Gong therefore sees Trump as an ally, as they see CCP as the ultimate evil.
To support the Trump Administration, Falun Gong has been connected to media outlets like The Epoch Times, Honest Paper, and Pure American Journalism
Officially Falun Gong and Epoch Times deny any connection between each other, but ABC interviewed a former employee of Epoch Time’s Australian division who says that is a lie, and that virtually everyone who works for The Epoch Times is a Falun Gong practitioner.
And you probably have heard of Epoch Times in the form of an Ad because Falun Gong has spent millions of dollars funding social media campaigns for them.
The fact finding website Snopes.com has been investigating Epoch Time’s activity on Facebook and found that a network linked to Epoch Times called “The BL (or the Beautiful Life)” have been creating fake Facebook groups and accounts that support the Trump administration.
They took pictures from the internet of random people to create these fake accounts. They were sloppy enough to use a picture of the very famous actress Helen Mirren for one of their fake posts.
When snopes exposed The BL, they began to use AI generated images as profile pics for their fake account. But AI technology isn’t quite up to the task yet. These had distorted faces with black eyes and drooping eye brows. That shows the lengths the Epoch Times and allegedly Falun Gong will go to in order to sway public opinion.
Because getting Trump re-elected was of cosmic importance to them.
Facebook Banned the BL and Epoch times from advertising further in August of 2019. Facebook estimated they spent $9.5 Million in ads and reached 55 Million users.
Snopes found that the BL network was being run out of Vietnam by former Epoch Times employees, but Epoch Times denied any connections. Once again, that sort-of sounds like Plausible Deniability to me.
What does Falun Gong say about all this political meddling? Their Vice President stated that from an organizational point of view they don’t have any policy on how their members should vote. There is no written rule.
Although “Master Li” hasn’t been on camera for years, ABC showed a clip of him from 1999 saying: “I only teach people to be good, to be free of disease and do exercises, and to reach higher moral standards. I make people’s hearts better.”
In conclusion to what ABC had to say about Falun Gong. They lightly touched on the the supernatural beliefs of Falun Gong, and explained their new shady political involvement (namely their support for Donald Trump and conservative America). ABC also talked to a few families who suffered tragedy at the hands of Falun Gong’s growing movement, and went in to great detail on how they have been persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party
That is all the farther I’ll go for this episode. I like to keep my episodes under 20 minutes if possible. But I’m not done with this topic. I have a lot more to say. I consider this topic fascinating and a goldmine of information. Tune in next week to hear the second half of my story on Falun Gong.
In the meantime, I have posted the written accompanying Blog post, the written version of this podcast, on WordPress.com. I’ll leave a link in the description.
These notes are not grammatically correct. They are notes. But I thought I might start posting the notes simultaneously as the audio podcasts are released. This way I can use visual elements and include links to my sources. This also gives me a chance to show what kind of research goes in to each episode. Enjoy!
Tarrare
How’s it hangin’ Who’d a Thunkers?!?! Welcome back to the variety Show-&-Tell that is my podcast.
I took last week off from everything: work, this podcast, and the greater Pittsburgh area. It was sorely needed. But now I’m back and I’m delighted to get back to this wonderful podcast that I enjoy so much.
This week’s episode is about another weird topic from history.
—-
In 1772 a baby boy was born to a poor farming family in the country of France.
FUN FACT: I actually have a French Minor from college that I don’t put to use,, nearly as much as I should.
Anyway, this Baby boy’s name was Tarrare and he was a Bon-a-fide freak of nature.
He ate A LOT – like a disgusting amount
By his teenage years he could eat a quarter of an entire cow… but instead of being a big obese dude as one might expect, Tarrare only weighed 100 lbs. when he was 17 years old.
His mouth was absurdly large. He looked like a Canadian character from South Park.
The Canadians of South Park.
It was said Tarrare could fit a dozen eggs in his cheeks all at once. Plus his teeth were gnarly with cracks and stains all over them…. gross
His stomach was very elastic. You may have heard of a muffin top, well, Tarrare had the THEE muffin top.
If he was full, his stomach was a giant ball jutting out of his tiny 100lbs. body, and if he was hungry, his stomach reverted to a big flabby mass of drooping skin around his mid-section. People said he could wrap his excess stomach flesh around his waist like a belt.
Mark Oliver from AllThatsInteresting.com writes: “When he ate, he would blow up like a balloon, especially in his stomach region. But shortly after, he would step into the bathroom and release nearly everything, leaving behind a mess that the surgeons described as “fetid beyond all conception.” – FETID mean smelling extremely unpleasant.
And even though most peasants in 18th century France smelled rather ripe… Tarrare apparently smelled god-awful in amongst these already smelly people.
-lol—-This guy is sounding like one heck of catch ladies… lemme tell ya!—
Tarrare’s flabby belly and cheek skin made him resemble cartoon, but what really sold the look was the visible stench wafting off of his person at all times. Because he subjected his body to so much food all the time, it gave off a great amount of heat. Tarrare was hot to the touch. This made him sweat profusely. This constant sweat made Tarrare smell like an open sewage system and this made him unbearable to be around.
This guy was such a burden on his family that they kicked him out. They couldn’t afford to feed their little demonic glutton troll of a son.
So after scavenging through piles of trash for awhile, Tarrare realized he could make a profit off of his disgusting appetite. He became a street performer.
Tarrare joined a roaming band of performers… they were actually prostitutes and thieves that would put on a show (or perform sexual acts) on people throughout France… then steal from their audience/ sexual partners when their attentions were elsewhere.
Our boy Tarrare was one of the main attractions.
People gave him baskets and buckets full of apples, eggs, and even wine corks… Tarrare just shoveled it all in to his degusting gullet.
Tarrare became famous in Paris for his art of …. packing his obscenely large mouth full of any trash a passerby might be willing to give him to eat. Then he’d gladly swallow all of that unwanted rotten food and garbage, collected their money, and continue to ask people on the street for anything that remotely resembled sustenance so he could eat that too.
Tarrare’s street performing reminds me of another performer that I consider nothing short of a hero.. He’s a professional wrestler you may have heard of. Here… listen for yourself:
Tarrare’s street ART (if you can call it that) worked well until one time Tarrare got an intestinal blockage. He was taken to the hospital where he was given a powerful laxative… this treatment ended in what I can only imagine as an explosive poo.
In 1792, Tarrare joined the FRENCH REVOLUTIONARY ARMY.
There he was given FOUR TIMES the rations of a regular soldier… but still was seen rummaging through the garbage. People saw him shoving fists full of trash in his mouth from gutters.
Tarrare had joined the Army (probably with the promise of free food), but the Army didn’t want him. Like parents, Tarrare’s fellow soldiers couldn’t take his horrible stench and didn’t appreciate how much food he sucked up.
Due to his metabolism, if he wasn’t eating or sleeping, Tarrare was tired all the time. This wasn’t just an end of the day kind of tired that you and I experience. He was feeling the full extent of the medical anomaly that was his digestive system hit his energy levels.
Tarrare must have passed out a few too many times, because the French army sent him far behind the lines where Physicians Baron Percy and Dr. Courville could examine the other-worldly like specimen that was Tarrare.
The doctors subjected him to a series of tests:
1 – They fed him an absurd amount of food which consisted of curdled milk and hard pudding left over from a dozen German laborers. = Tarrare scarfed down the food like it was no problem.
2 – They gave him a live eel to see what he would do. Apparently he really enjoyed the flesh of serpents. Tarrare crushed the eel’s head with his troll teeth and then swallowed the eel whole…
This is an eel skeleton. THIS is what Tarrare had in his stomach and it didn’t bother him one bit…
3 – Tarrare was observed capturing a live house cat and biting in to its stomach to disembowel it. From there, he drank all of the cat’s blood and continued to swallow the cat’s carcass whole. A few minutes later, Tarrare spit up the bones, skin, and fur of the cat just like an owl regurgitating a pellet left from its prey.
While all these tests on Tarrare were being done in the name of medical research, he was still technically a soldier in the French Revolutionary Army. No one in the Military was able to find a suitable job for Tarrare, until one French General by the name Alexandre de Beauharnais—- (Bow-ARE-nay) —-had the idea to use him for espionage.
The idea was to have Tarrare swallow a wooden box that contained a message inside, written on paper.
Tarrare was brought before a number of French Generals, just after finishing another experiment where he consumed 30 pounds of pork liver and lungs. General Beauharnais asked Tarrare to swallow the wooden box. In return, Tarrare was promised a wheelbarrel full of bull organs.
Two days after the experiment began, Tarrare “passed” the wooden box with the message intact. He was given his reward of a small wagon load of bull organs, which he scarfed down promptly, then his “talent” was put to use.
The French sent Tarrare in to Prussia after making him swallow classified information. Now he was an official spy delivering an important message to an imprisoned French Colonel behind enemy lines. Except Tarrare made for a poor spy. He couldn’t speak the enemy’s language of German, and he stuck out like a sore thumb… because you know… all the trash gargling, ungodly stench, and absurdly large troll mouth.
The Prussians captured Tarrare, stripped him down, searched, whipped, and tortured him for a full day before he finally broke. Knowing the message was in his stomach, the Prussian chained Tarrare to a disgusting military latrine for hours until the message box was “passed.”
Finally Tarrare laid his golden egg of a message. A Prussian general read it and found that this mission was just another test. The message just requested Tarrare’s contact to relay whether he had delivered the message successfully. In a fit of rage, the Prussian general ordered Tarrare be hanged.
Standing at the gallows, noose around his neck, Tarrare started to shamelessly sob. By this time, the Prussian general’s rage had subsided and the sight of his prisoner weeping gave him a change of heart.
The Prussian general ordered for Tarrare’s life to be spared, and after more torture, he was set free.
Upon his return to France, Tarrare begged Doctor Percy to cure his Polyphagia, so that he could go about life as a normal man.
Dr. Percy tried everything he could think of: Tobacco, vinegar, and even opium pills, but nothing was working.
Tarrare’s demonic appetite lead him to hangout behind the local butcher where he was seen fighting off stray dogs and wolves for scraps of discarded meat.
Back in the late 18th century medicine was still under the impression that bleeding someone would cure certain ailments. This was called bloodletting and it didn’t work. In fact this only made patients more ill. Turns out our blood is pretty important for human life!
This bloodletting was being performed at the hospital where Tarrare was being treated. In his downtime, Tarrare was known to seek out the patients undergoing bloodletting so he could…. drink their blood to satiate his hunger. He was even caught in the hospital’s morgue devouring body parts of the deceased.
This behavior was tolerated by the hospital staff for unknown reasons. Perhaps Tarrare was such a rare medical specimen that they were willing to let demonic human body feasting slide…
But it seems the hospital staff had their final straw when a 14 month old infant went missing from the hospital. There was no proof that Tarrare ate the boy, but rumors were circulating and Dr. Percy thought it best to kick him out all the same.
Fours years passed with Tarrare fending for himself in France. There is no record of this time in his life, but with his appetite, I doubt Tarrare had much time to do anything but eat, sleep, and defecate.
Once those 4 years ended, Tarrare appeared at a hospital in Versailles with a severe case of tuberculosis.
Dr. Baron Percy caught wind that the rarest patient he had ever treated was dying so he fled to Versailles to see him one last time alive. Percy was with Tarrare when he died in 1798 at the age of 26.
He wrote that even though Tarrare wreaked to high heaven while alive to the point where the fumes were visible… nothing prepared him for the stench that came shortly after Tarrare’s death.
It is quite common for a person’s body to evacuate stool, urine, and saliva shortly after death. This can be alarming when a normal human being dies, but when Tarrare died it was basically hell on earth for everyone’s olfactory senses within a 1 mile radius.
Dr. Baron Percy began an autopsy on Tarrare, but had to stop halfway through. He and the other doctors couldn’t stand the stench.
What they found during his autopsy, before giving up, was horrifying.
Tarrare’s jaw huge and although all of his teeth remained, “the color of their enamel streaked like marble,” and “the molars were much worn away.”
With Tarrare’s head tilted back, “the mouth and esophagus formed a rectilinear canal, into which a cylinder of a foot in circumference could be introduced without touching the palate.” Meaning Tarrare’s mouth, throat were gaped to over a foot in circumference all the way down to his stomach… Sounds like he really did look look like a Canadian character on South Park.
His abdomin was severely deformed. Tarrare’s digestive system dominated the vast majority of abdominal cavity.
The London Medical and Physical Journal – states: “The entrails were putrefied, confounded together, and immersed in pus; the liver was excessively large, void of consistence, and in a putrescent state; the gall-bladder was of considerable magnitude; the stomach, in a lax state, and having ulcerated patches dispersed about it, covered almost the whole of the abdominal region.”
Although Tarrare’s actions were at time immoral, and almost always disgusting. The autopsy helped show that he wasn’t just an evil person obsessed with consuming… he was plagued by a freak medical condition.
I started looking in to Tarrare’s life with hopes of coming away with a disgustingly comical story to tell on my podcast and blog, but I soon found myself pitying this man.
He was born this way, and his family abandoned him for it. He had this hellish appetite and need to consume virtually all that was around him.
In summarizing Dr. Percy’s observations, the London Medical and Physical Journal writes: “The young Tarrare was almost devoid of force and ideas. When he had eaten to a moderate extent, and his hunger only appeased, he was quick and active, he was heavy and sleepy only when he had eaten to excess.”
As if to say, for most of his life, he was either tortured by awful hunger pains, and when he had eaten his body used so much energy for digestion that his mind went blank, incapable of any real thought. There were only glimpses of who he really was in those rare occasions when Tarrare’s “hunger [was] only appeased.”
His story is a tragic one. The only people who cared about Tarrare were only invested in him as a specimen to be observed. No one cared what kind of person he was or what personality he processed.
and yeah… I’m just going to leave it on that depressing note.
I’ve covered the main points on this podcast, but if you’d like to learn more about Tarrare, I have included an accompanying blog post where you’ll find a script of this episode plus images and links to my sources.
I did a similar blog post for episode 10 “The Sacred Band of Thebes.” I think I will publish my notes more often. Link to my blog will be in the description.
Until next week Who’d a Thunkers!
Below are the official medical records used to create this podcast/blog.
In 1896 Doctors George M Gould and Walter Pyle wrote;
In it, they wrote of Baron Percy, a man whom met Tarrare, and his impression of the greatest known Glutton the World has ever seen.
“He ate a quarter of beef in twenty-four hours. He was fond of the most revolting things. He particularly relished the flesh of serpents and would quickly devour the largest. In the presence of Lorenze he seized a live cat with his teeth, eventrated it (disembowled), sucked its blood, and ate it, leaving the bare skeleton only. In about thirty minutes he rejected the hairs in the manner of birds of prey and carnivorous animals. He also ate dogs in the same manner. On one occasion it was said that he swallowed a living eel without chewing it; but he had first bitten off its head. He ate almost instantly a dinner that had been prepared for 15 vigorous workmen and drank the accompanying water and took their aggregate allowance of salt at the same time. After this meal his abdomen was so swollen that it resembled a balloon. General-in-chief had seen him devour thirty pounds of raw liver and lungs. Nothing seemed to diminish his appetite. He waited around butcher-shops to eat what was discarded for the dogs. He drank the bleedings of the hospital and ate the dead from the dead-houses. He was suspected of eating a child of fourteen months, but no proof could be produced of this. He was of middle height and was always heated and sweating. He died of a purulent diarrhea, all his intestines and peritoneum being in a suppurating condition.”
“The dogs and cats fled in terror at his aspect, as if they had anticipated the kind of fate he was preparing for them.”
“Let a person imagine, all that domestic and wild animals, the most filthy and ravenous, are capable of devouring, and they may form some idea of the appetite, as well as the wants of Tarrare.”
Polyphagia, also known as hyperphagia, is the medical term for excessive or extreme hunger. It’s different than having an increased appetite after exercise or other physical activity. While your hunger level will return to normal after eating in those cases, polyphagia won’t go away if you eat more food.
Born 1887 in the Prague Indian Territory – Oklahoma (some sources say 1888)
Born and raised in a 1 room cabin in Indian Territory by his Father Hiram Thorpe and Mother Charlotte along with his Twin Brother Charlie
Hiram was 6 foot 4 and a terror to the town (according to his grandson Jack Thorpe)
Thorpe’s birth and Native American name was Wa-Tho-Huk, meaning “Bright Path,” but he was later christened Jacobus Franciscus Thorpe.
At the age of Two, the Native American territory was sold off as part of the Oklahoma Land rush. Jim Thorpe Grew up in the midst of Two Very different cultures clashing
At the Age of 6 Hiram sent his twin sons to the Sac and Fox Boarding School
By the age of 8 Jim had run away from boarding school many times, just to have his father bring him back to the school 23 miles away. One time he found his twin brother Charlie had passed away from a pandemic.
After Charlie’s death, Hiram sent Jim to the Haskell Indian Institute. this was much farther away
But when Jim heard his father had fallen deathly ill, he walked the 280 miles home in just 2 weeks.
When Jim returned he found his father had recovered, but shortly after his mother Charlotte died from giving birth to her 11th child.
Jim then went to Texas where he made a living breaking horses
He was proud of his ability to break any wild horse he was pitted against
1904 Hiram sends Jim away again to the Indian Industrial school in Carlisle PA at the age of 17
Hiram’s last words to his son “You are an Indian. I want you to show other races what an Indian can do.” then Hiram died 2 months later.
The Carlisle school was social experiment that took Native American children and tried to transform them into Modern Americans.
Once enrolled these kids were not allowed to leave for 5 years.
Hundreds died of disease, and thousands ran away. Out of the 10,000 that were enrolled, only 761 graduated
Jim was known for being rebellious and was punished many times by being locked out in the guard house
Through the schools Outing system, Jim was sent to live and work on a White Family’s farm so he could learn how to live as a white man.
He was paid half that of a white farm hand and was treated as an outsider by the family
He promptly ran away, but with no family to turn to, Jim returned in 1907 at the age of 20
At this time, Glen “Pop” Warner, the athletic Director at Carlisle notice Jim’s athletic ability at track practice. Where other students struggled to high jump over the 5’8″ bar, Jim Thorpe leaped over the pole with inches to spare.
He quickly stood out as a track star. but Jim was known for being almost too good of a sport. His son Jack Thorpe explained that the many times his father would be far out ahead of his competitors he would stop short of the finish line as to not embarrass his opponent. He only wanted to win, not humiliate them.
Jim decided track wasn’t enough and found American Football more his speed. (keep in mind this was before pads or even leather skull caps)
Jim became accustomed to the perks of being a Jock at the Carlisle Indian School. He and his teammates got a separate kitchen with ample meat and potatoes, a billiard table, and their coach Glen Warner was known to break the rules by paying his players cash for each successful play.
1908 football season started with Jim scoring 5 touchdowns in the first game. His team went on to beat every college team in the east, except for Harvard who they lost to 17 to 0.
That summer Jim decided to play baseball for the rag tag North Carolina League. He did this to make some extra money, but playing for any amount of Money got you banned from playing in any college team.
It is important to note the NC League was hardly professional. Rules were bent or flat out broken by tampering with equipment to gain advantages, players frequently switched sides to get more money, and by the end of that season, 3 different teams claimed they were the champs. The league president quit stating it was a laughing stock.
Jim Played baseball for 2 seasons. During those years of 1909 and 1910, Jim didn’t return to Carlisle as he knew he wouldn’t be accepted since he played for $
However, Glen Warner’s team was suffering massive losses without their star player and promised Jim he would turn a blind eye to his baseball days if he would return
In 1911 Football season started off with blow out after blowout. Jim Thorpe was back in Carlisle and made sure the Eastern Division knew about it. The Pittsburgh Dispatch wrote how Thorpe would punt the ball down the field then run fast enough to pick up the ball himself. They wrote he was a “Host in himself. He appeared to be impervious to injury.”
When it came time for the Harvard game, this time Carlisle won 18 to 15. Jim, as the half back and kicker scored every point. 1 touch down and rest by field goal
June 1912, Jim and a fellow teammate qualified for the US Olympics in Stockholm, Sweden
This time in Olympics, only Amateurs could compete.
The London Amateur Athletic Club defined an Amateur as a Gentleman forbidden to work as a mechanic, artisan, or laborer since the average workman has no idea of sport for its own sake. Their idea of the only people allowed in the Olympics were white men who did not need to work for a living.
However, the USA did not share the same definition. They defined Amateur as anyone who did not receive pay for playing. USA included an African American to run track, Hawaiian Pacific Islander on the swim team, and a working NYC Cop =throwing shot put. Not to mention our boy Jim Thorpe and his fellow native American Teammate Tewanima
Jim entered in to the Pentathlon, based on the ancient Greek Event. It consisted of 5 different events with the winner being determined by an overall score
Running Broad Jump: Jim Thorpe 1st with 23 feet 2.7 inches’
Javelin Throw: Jim Thorpe 3rd place 153 feet, 2.9 inches.
Note: Jim had not competed in Javelin until right before the Olympics
Discus Throw: Jim Thorpe 1st Place, 116 feet, 8.4 inches
200 Meter Dash: Jim Thorpe 1st Place
1500 Meter Run: Jim Thorpe 1st place 4 minutes, 48.8 seconds
Jim also entered in the Decathlon which included all the events of the Pentathlon, plus 5 more:
100 Meter Sprint
Hurdles
400 Meter Run
high Jump
Pole Vault
Out of the first 9 events, Jim came first in only 2. But he still had a shot at Gold if he won the final event… the 1500 meter run
Drunk History:
Comedy Central’s show Drunk History shined a light on the legendary story of Jim Thorpe at the 1912 Olympics.
Another member of the American Team that year by the name Avery Brundage was pegged to be USA’s big winner.
After the first day of the Decathlon (5 of the 10 total events), it was clear Brundage was being overshadowed by Thorpe
The next day in the locker room Thorpe’s professional grade track shoes had gone missing. (many blaimed Brundage).
But Thorpe didn’t seem to mind. He picked two random leather shoes out of the trash.
One of the shoes was too big for Thorpe so he simply put on a 2nd sock to even things out… How did Thorpe do that day, especially in the final even the 1500 meter run?
Beating his own time and the world record by 4 seconds, Jim came in 1st with 4 minutes 40.1 seconds
Jim Thorpe did what no athlete had ever done before when he won the Pentathlon and Decathlon
When presenting the awards, Sweden’s King Gustaf said “Sir, you are the greatest athlete in the world.” In reply Jim said “thanks King.”
Jim’s return to the USA consisted a ticker tape parade in NYC and scientists taking 46 measurements of his body in an attempt to catalog the perfect human form.
Despite all the professional sport opportunities, Jim went back to Carlisle to play 1 more year at Glen Warner’s request.
That year, 1912, the Carlisle was pitted against the US Military’s football team at West Point. These were the sons and grandsons of the men who fought the Native Americans.
One of the Cadets was Dwight D Eisenhower, future Supreme Allied commander in WW2 and President of the USA
The Carlisle Indians beat West Point 27 to 6
The New York Times wrote “West Point’s much talked of defense was like tissue paper before the Indians. Thorpe simply ran wild. It was like trying to catch a shadow.”
1913 a newspaper revealed Jim Thorpe had played Baseball for money in NC. This disqualified him from his Olympic medals.
Despite his loyalty to Glen “Pop” Warner and the Carlisle Indian Institute, Jim was coerced in to signing a pre-written confession so Jim could take the fall all on his own.
However, having his amateur title taken away, there was nothing keeping Thorpe from playing in Professional Sports.
He promptly signed a 3 year long $6,000 a year contract with the NY Giants
Despite his athletic ability, Jim Thorpe, as a Native American, was treated as second class citizen and teammate.
When the Giant’s manager called Thorpe a “Dumb Indian” for missing a signal, Jim snapped. He picked the manager up and shook him like a rag doll. That was the end of Thorpe’s career with the Giants.
Jim married, bought a house, and had his first son. Despite his father being known as the town jerk, Jim was known as gentle and loving father/ family man.
Sadly in 1918 Jim Thorpe Jr became one of the first victims of the influenza outbreak
It caused Jim to hit the bottle hard and after 9 years of marriage, his wife Iva asked for divorce. Jim went on to marry 2 more times in his life and father 8 children in total.
By now Jim was 36 years old playing Pro Baseball in Spring and Summer, then Football in the Fall
He was the first president of the American Professional Football Association (later known as the NFL)
Jim also played as star player of the Canton Bulldogs out of Ohio.
In 1929 at the age of 41, Jim Thorpe played his last Pro Football game and in October of the same year, the Great Depression hit
Like Millions of his fellow American’s Jim had trouble finding work, he was spotted refereeing for a dance in NYC
Thorpe then went to Hollywood where he found some work as a Native American actor. He fought for equal pay for his fellow Native American Actors
He received awards and gave speeches all across America. One speech showed his respect for his roots: ” I have never forgotten I am an Indian. No Indian can forget it. We settled this country long before the white people ever came to these shores. But red men are wards of the Government. The Indian should be permitted to shed his inferiority complex and live like a normal American Citizen.”
in 2005 evidence showed Jim even played professional Basketball
Jim died in 1953 at the age of 66 from a heart attack.
In 1982 the international Olympic committee restored his gold medals.
1999 – Joint Resolution of Congress decided the greatest American Athlete of the 20th Century was Jim Thorpe
Some regard him as “Jim Thorpe, World’s Greatest Athlete”… the name of his biography.
Ancient Greece: the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta (Greece’s 2 major fighting forces) waged from 431 to 405 BC.
Athens is next to Thebes in Blue. Source Click HERE
You’ve probably heard of Sparta. Most Likely for their show of bravery and Valor during the Persian War at the battle of Thermopylae, which occurred in 480 BC (years before the Peloponnesian War).
Even before this historic battle, Sparta had a reputation for being an army that was invincible
Sparta is categorized as this all-out military state. They prided themselves on hardcore army strength and had one of the best land armies in Greece. They were seen as more of a conservative society focused on their military and fought with brute strength.
Athens is categorized as a strategic society that prided itself on being progressive with art and writing. They had more money and focused their military might on their Navy.
Sparta wanted to push back Athens’s expanse of Democracy in Greece to establish oligarchs throughout the region.
Oligarchs are governments where a small group of people are in control of the masses
A more modern example of the Peloponnesian war between two political ideologies would be the cold war, where Western Democracy (backed by the USA) had allies all around the globe fighting against Eastern Communism (Backed by the Soviet Union).
One can draw a lot of parallels between the Cold War and the Peloponnesian war.
Both Sparta and Athens got a lot of allies to back their respective causes. Almost every city state was involved in this epic war.
Among Sparta’s allies was Greek City State of Thebes
By: 405 BC, the Peloponnesian War ends
Sparta comes out on top and begins their hegemony (rule) as the head honcho in Ancient Greece
Sparta, known for their skull cracking military prowess, kept other Greek City States in line with fear
Some of the other City States, even ones that were allies with Sparta during the war, started to not like Sparta’s iron fist rule and were now rebelling
Among them was Thebes
Thebes had started to create an alliance in their region known as the Boeotian Confederacy. The Boeotians (lead by Thebes) were quickly becoming a 3rd major force to be reckoned with in the Greek Peninsula alongside Athens and Sparta. The Boeotians and Thebes are used interchangeably here.
Sparta was beginning to Worry about the Boeotians, especially because Athens seemed to be on Thebes/Boeotians side
But Thebes attacked Plataea, an Athens backed City, So Athens was like “You’re on your own Thebes, or Boeotians, or whatever you’re calling yourselves these days”
And the Boeotians were like “fine, be that way, we don’t need you anymore, we’re becoming our own major power in the Region!”
War started to break out all over the place in Greece, Athens was at war with Sparta again, Sparta got in some altercations with Thebes, so Sparta called a Peace Conference to cool things down a bit.
At this conference was Sparta, Athens, Thebes, Macedonia, and Persian King Artaxerxes
Everyone ended up voting for Peace. It all looked good, but then the very next day, Theban Delegation Leader Epaminondas wanted to sign the Peace Treaty for all the Boeotian League.
Spartan King Agesilaus, refused because this would basically confirm that Thebes is the head of the entire Boeotian force (which it practically was) but Sparta wasn’t going to give a thumbs up to their biggest threat so far
Epaminondas came back at him by saying “well if all the city states in Boeotian territory should get to sign independently, then all the city states in your Peloponnesian territory should get to sign for themselves too. If Thebes can’t represent all of Boeotia, then Sparta can’t represent all of Peloponnesian!”
The dispute caused Spartan King Agesilaus to kick Epaminondas and all of Thebes from the peace conference. Epaminondas rushed home to Thebes to prepare for WAR!
After a few small altercations between Thebes (Boeotians) and Sparta, the Spartan King Cleombrotus marched a large-scale army to squash Thebes and their insolent Boeotian forces
As I said before, Sparta had the reputation for being the biggest and baddest army in Greece and had this reputation for a very long time, even before the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC
However, in 375 BC, before King Cleombrotus marched on Leuctra, the Spartan War Party had suffered their first loss to Theban General Pelopidas in the battle of Tegyra
Although it was a small battle, it placed a crack in Sparta’s reputation of invincibility… a crack that was about to exploited at the Battle of Leuctra
Battle of Leuctra 371 BC (just 10 miles outside of the City of Thebes)Theban Leaders were reluctant to confront Cleombrotus’ s Spartan forces on the battlefield.
Sparta had a lot of soldiers (10,000 infantry and 1,000 Calvary according to Plutarch) whereas Thebes only had about 6,000 infantry and 1,500 Calvary. So, Sparta’s numbers 11K and Thebes numbers 7.5K.
It was Commander Epaminondas the general who was kicked out of the Spartan Peace Conference and Pelopidas (the first General to beat the Spartans at Tegyra) who swayed their fellow Theban leaders to be brave face Sparta on the battle field
Early July 6th, 371 BC, Thebes Marched on King Cleombrotus’ s Spartan camp near Leuctra
Confident in their numbers and military prowess, The Spartans formed a simple formation of an even-lined Phalanx of infantry… armed with large Shields, swords, and spears.
As customary, the right side of the Phalanx was comprised of the Spartans most battle-hardened elite soldiers known as Spartiate’s
The only move the Spartans used other than their even line of Warriors, was their inexperienced cavalry was placed out in front alone
The Spartans expected their enemies the Thebans to mirror their simple lined formation (with Thebe’s best warriors on their own right side) and hope for the best, but General Epaminondas had a plan
The Boeotian forces chose not to form a simple line, instead they put a huge force of their most seasoned warriors (including the Sacred Band of Thebes) lead by Pelopidas on their own left flank.
So, Thebes had a huge force with about 50 ranks deep, on their left facing the Spartans top soldiers and Generals. This was to add pushing power against the Spartans. This was a Risky formation, because the rest of the Boeotian line was very thin, just a few ranks deep. The Thebes also put their Cavalry out front
Now, before I get in to how the battle played out, a little side note: The Sacred Band of Thebes is important to touch on here: In 378 BC, Theban General Gorgidas created this branch of the Theban army. It was comprised of 300 of the Thebes best and brightest warriors. They were 150 pairs of gay lovers. The thought was that their love for each other would push them to fight with wild bravery.
Plato wrote “No man is such a craven that love cannot inspire him with a courage that makes him equal to the bravest born.”
A Quote from HistoryDaily.Org: “Admission into the Sacred Band of Thebes was not open to just anyone. Gorgidas personally selectedthe 300 members based on their athletic ability and military experience. Each couple fit the model of Greece homosexual relations at the time: an older, dominant gentleman and his younger, passive playmate. The couples chosen to join the division were, according to Polyaenus, “devoted to each other by mutual obligations of love.” In fact, the use of the word “sacred” in the company’s name is thought to derive from the sacred vow taken between the lover (the older, active lover) and his beloved (the younger, passive lover) before the Shrine of Iolaus in Thebes. (Iolaus was the nephew and beloved of Hercules.)”
In times of Peace, the Sacred Band kept in shape by holding Wrestling tournaments, and dance competitions engaging in various arts to make them more rounded individuals
The Sacred Band was Led by Pelopidas and Epaminondas (some speculate these two were lovers themselves)
The Sacred Band were a crucial part in defeating Sparta at the Battle of Tegyra being led by Pelopidas.
Now back to these 300 gay warriors facing off against the most elite soldiers of the most fearsome military force in Ancient Greece, the Spartiates.
Before the infantry of the two sides went at it, Their Cavalry forces out front went into battle. The Boeotian Cavalry was larger in number and more experienced than Spartan cavalry. the Theban cavalry was victorious. The Spartan cavalry retreated to their infantry, causing temporary disarray.
Meanwhile, the Theban’s large left flank (lead by Pelopidas and the Sacred Band) were advancing toward the Spartan’s most elite soldiers.
Spartan King Cleombrotus now noticed the Theban’s odd formation and tried to shout orders to change formation, but it was too late. The Boeotian force’s huge left Flank had already started slamming in to Cleombrotus’ s elite right flank. The Spartan’s Kings orders could not be heard over the deafening sound of battle between two of the greatest fighting forces the Greek Peninsula had ever seen
Both the Spartans and the Theban Boeotian Forces were losing men, but the Boeotian forces had stacked their left flank so deep it was pushing through the Spartans with Ease
Pelopidas saw an opening where King Cleombrotus was vulnerable. He led the Sacred Band forward and was able to fatally wound the Spartan king. The Spartan soldiers were caught off guard and were bound by duty to retrieve their King’s body.
The Spartans were successful in reclaiming Cleombrotus’ s body, but in doing so caused even more chaos among their ranks. On top of this, Pelopidas and the Sacred Band had slain many of the Spartan’s most senior officers of their elite forces.
The loss of their King, senior officers, and the sight of their best warriors retreating with the King’s body cause the rest of the Spartan forces to retreat
General Epaminondas and Pelopidas had won the Battle of Leuctra
Over 1,000 Spartans died (400 were the elite Spartiates)
King Cleombrotus was the first Spartan King to die in Battle since King Leonidas who led the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae. This was the said to be the Only time a Spartan Army lost to a numerically inferior force
The Spartan reputation of invincibility that was cracked at the small Battle of Tegyra, was now completely obliterated and with it, the Spartan hegemony that had been in place since the Peloponnesian war, was also destroyed. The Thebes were the new big kids on the Greek Block. However, GREAT things were brewing just North of Greece.
King Phillip II of Macedonia (who had been held hostage in Thebes in his younger years learning of Theban War practices and strategies) now had a HUGE army of Macedonians and was bent on subjugating all of Greece under his Macedonian Banner.
Since the Great Power Houses of Greece (Sparta, Athens, and Thebes) had been warring among themselves for so long, they were left weakened
In 338 BC, at the Battle of Chaeronea, King Phillip II (accompanied by his 18-year-old son Alexander [later to be known as Alexander the Great]) defeated the Thebes and their Sacred Band.
It is said that young Alexander the Great was the first to defeat the Sacred Band and he witnessed their members go into furies of rage once each of their lovers fell.
King Phillip would be assassinated 2 years later in 336 BC, but his son Alexander would go on to Conquer most of the known world leading troops all the way to India (but that is a different story)
The Mighty Macedonians conquered and subjugated all of Greece for nearly 200 years until the Romans came to power in 146 BC
King Phillip gave the Sacred Band a chance to surrender, but they fought until the last man. Sources say King Phillip II wept at the sight of their slain bodies, because he was so moved by their bravery. The Sacred Band, first warriors to defeat the Spartans of greater number of their own were wiped off the face of the earth. never again would Greece have a military branch quite like it.
Sources:
The Battle fo Leuctra 371 BC
by Baz Battles
I got a lot of the still shots above from this source. Their video is amazing
Full moons are a blessing and a curse. On one paw, a full moon night makes for some appealing scenery, but on the other paw it leaves you wide open to predators. Gathering food is always a rush job on a night like this. In the past I’ve watched the gatherers do it plenty of times before, but every time I see them in action it gets my heart racing. This time it’s different. Tonight, we don’t just watch from the safety of the tree. Tonight, my buddy Brox and I join the ranks of the others to gather food by the creek. Tonight, my heart isn’t just racing, it’s practically bursting out of my chest with excitement!
Brox and I peek our heads out of the tree hole. Crawling out into the moonlight we leave our worried moms and the younglings behind. My lungs fill with the cool mountain air and I hear a familiar voice.
“To the ground,” it says in hushed way. The command comes from the raggedy old coon with a long scar running down his skull named Snikt. No rock will be over turned, and no grub harvested tonight without Snikt’s say-so. That is how things go for just about everything our clan does. Snikt is the head honcho and I think he likes it that way a little too much.
The second Snikt’s words pass his fangs we all scurry down the trees wetting our paws in the dewy grass below. “To the river,” Snikt whispers to the rest of the gatherers. He turns back towards Brox and me. “You two young cubs stay close behind me.”
Brox and I follow his orders. Our role is that of spectators more than gatherers. This being our first night on the job it makes sense he would try and baby us. I am stone cold bored out of my mind. I feel the urge to join in on the action, but Snikt keeps a close eye on Brox and me.
“Stay behind me boys and watch how it’s done,” Snikt lectures us as he wets his paws in the creek. I am no stranger to how the gatherers procure food from the creek but watching it up close is a different experience from watching from the trees.
Another raccoon close to us lifts a rock to search for crayfish causing the familiar slurping sound of the river mud and sediment detaching from the bottom of the rock. I watch as he reaches underneath the rock to pull out whatever tasty morsel is lurking there. All the sudden a twig snaps in the trees to our left, a different direction from the rest of our clan. All the raccoons gathering food stop what they are doing to listen for any other signs of danger coming from the woods.
We hear another twig snapping that’s followed by a large branch breaking. A few raccoons start to fidget as tensions grow amongst the clan of gatherers. Snikt opens his jaws to give another hushed command, but before the words escape his mouth the trees start to shake violently as a bear comes crashing out of the woods.
The bear makes a lumbering sprint towards our clan of raccoons gathering food by the creek. He is a young bear and he has a temper. He bellows as he runs “Scram you little pests! This is my territory now!”
The entire clan turns away from the creek and starts to scurry towards the tree line. There is no other option when facing an angry bear. Snikt leads Brox and me on the safest route away from the bear’s fury, but some of the other raccoons come much too close to his swinging paws. A coon to our right catches just the edge of the bear’s swing. He cries out in agony, but still manages to escape with his life.
Satisfied that he’s gotten his message across, the bear slows his pursuit. “Do not return here coons or you will be my next meal!” he gives as a final warning.
Us gatherers reach the tree home and meet up with the rest of the clan. Another seasoned food gatherer is carrying the wounded coon not too far behind us. The mothers of the clan come out from their tree holes to tend to his wounds. The clan is shaken up by this latest bear attack. Some of the mothers are scolding Snikt for allowing such a run-in with a young bear.
One of the mothers starts to lay into our clan’s cautious leader. “How could this happen Snikt? You take precaution after precaution, yet it seems every night you’re scampering back home with another wounded coon at your heels!”
Another mother shares her concerns, “This life style is dwindling our numbers and weakening our clan.” She offers a solution, “We didn’t have nearly as many injuries or attacks when we scavenged food from the humans. We should go back to taking the food they leave at the edge of their dens.”
Snikt does not like her proposition. He turns his head towards her, showing his badly scarred face to the entire clan in the full moonlight. Pointing his paw to the scar he says, “This is what happens when we get near humans!”
I am too young to remember the days of our clan gathering food from the humans, but I’m told from the other coons that they were the good days. The humans left out more than enough food at the edge of their dens frequently. They tell me the only reason our clan went back to the forest, back to the old ways, is because of Snikt.
Brox told me what his mother told him one night. “I’m telling you Rocco, my mom says Snikt didn’t always have a stick up his butt. She says before Snikt was the leader, before he got that nasty scar up the left side of his face and ear, he was really friendly. He loved to watch the humans.”
Brox continued telling his rumored story. “One-night Snikt convinced a bunch of the other gatherers to follow him to where the humans like to play loud music and drink out of bottles. He wanted to scavenge a dumpster full of food. Some of the humans saw Snikt climb into the dumpster and started to attack him. A couple of the other humans started to throw the bottles at every raccoon they could find. Snikt got hit on the face, and that is how he got his scar. He’s hated humans ever since.”
Snikt continues to voice his fears about the humans to the clan. His voice is filled with fright, “The humans will draw you in with their peculiar way of life. They are the most interesting creatures to observe, but it is not worth quenching your curiosity. They are a vile and hateful lot. They sew destruction with every step.”
One of the respected clan mothers offers Snikt a response, “We are not going to observe them! We are going to live by them. Their perpetual offering of food in their bins is a resource too valuable to ignore. This life is too dangerous for us coons. We must return to the humans.”
Snikt fails to inspire the clan to stay away from the humans. Using the wounded gatherer from that night as evidence to why the clan needs to change, the mothers get Snikt to compromise on scavenging the humans for food.
They decide the clan can go back to the humans for food, but they will start with just gathering food from one human clan. I’m pretty bummed about it. I was hoping I’d get to explore more than just one human den.
They settle on a large human den made of logs on the outskirts of town. It’s relatively large for a human den and this human clan tends to put food out very frequently. I can’t wait to see my first human up close!
The Clan in the Wild
Part 2 – The Fresh Food Heist
The very next night after the bear attack our clan packs up and moves to the woods behind our designated human den. The gatherers of the clan scope things out to make sure the area is safe. The mothers start fixing up the tree holes. They are very preoccupied.
While the older adults keep busy, I decide I can’t wait any longer. After hearing so much about them, I must see what humans are like. Despite Snikt’s orders to stay within the tree line and to stay off the humans’ short grass, I venture onward to start exploring.
Brox comes along with me. I don’t think he’s nearly as curious as I am, and he is definitely not as brave, but he is a good friend. He is probably telling himself he is keeping me out of trouble by tagging along. No matter why he decided to come with me, I’m glad my pudgy friend did come along. Despite his tepidness, Brox is a great wingman for any kind of adventure.
In the early hours of the night Brox and I make our way to the edge of the forest where the trees meet the humans’ short grass. There is light coming from their den and you can see clearly inside, but we are still too far away to see what they are doing. Brox tries to convince me to stop here, saying we’ve broken enough rules for one night just by going to the edge of the forest. I ignore him and make a break for the bushes right outside the human den.
Reaching the bushes outside I feel mesmerized by the light illuminating from inside. Brox scurries in behind me as I peer up even closer to the light. As I lean closer and closer something touches my nose. I look to see what I’ve bumped in to, but nothing is there. It seems to be invisible. Backing away, I am startled at first, but then lean in again to investigate. It is like a clear sheet of ice shielding the human den from the outside but isn’t nearly as cold as ice. We can’t seem to get past the sheet of ice, but at least Brox and I are able to look through it. We sit outside the human den for the first half of the night watching them from the other side of the different sheets of warm ice around their den.
We count 4 humans and one short haired wolf living inside. Why anyone would want to live with a funny looking wolf is beyond me! Two of the humans are big adults, one mother and one father. Another human is tiny and either sleeps or cries all night. The other human’s size is in between the adults and the new born crying human. She’s a female and my favorite human to watch. The other humans call her Tilly. Watching these humans is just about the most exciting thing to ever happen to me. Brox surely notices me smiling from whisker to whisker.
Brox keeps whining about getting in to trouble with the rest of the clan so I cave, and we go back to our tree dens. It’s not long until daylight comes. The whole clan nestles into bed and no one suspects that Brox and I have already made first contact with the humans. I slept the next day dreaming of the humans and their bizarre way of life.
The next night comes and the clan is already running low on food. Snikt, the coon with by far the most experience with humans, gets all the food gatherers together. After telling Brox and I to stay behind for the first human raid, Snikt debriefs the adult gatherers. He tells them to “be extra cautious around humans, go for the trash cans, and to flee at the first scent or sound of anything suspicious.” Meanwhile Brox and I are making a break for the tree line. We are well aware of the rules of engagement already.
I convince Brox that even though Snikt says to go for the trash cans we are going to hit the big metal box in their middle of the den. The night before we saw the adult male open the metal box in the middle of the night and eat right from inside. When opened, it lights up and shows all of the fresh food the humans eat. While the adult gatherers are busy with the left-over scraps, Brox and I will be making the big score.
Last night I saw the human’s short haired wolf come and go through a small opening at the back of the den. Every time he went through, a sheet of plastic closed the opening behind him. That is how Brox and I will gain entry.
When we get to the tree line, I tell Brox our plan with the small plastic door. He’s hesitant about it but agrees it’s the best option. We both venture onward with the hope of scoring some tasty food, but unlike Brox, I’m also looking forward to getting a look inside the human den.
Brox and I sprint across the short grass surrounding the human den. We reach the small plastic door at the back entrance. I know humans sleep at night so it’s no surprise everything seems quiet. Last night Brox noticed the human’s short haired wolf sleeps on the adult humans’ bed with the door closed, so we should be safe from him.
Peeking my head inside through the plastic door slowly, the smell of human hits my nostrils all at once. Their stench is bizarre and unlike anything I’ve ever smelled in the woods. I cautiously place one paw on the warm stone-like floor. That didn’t seem to rouse any danger, so I proceed to bring in each paw one-by-one until I’m fully standing inside the human den. Nothing but the tip of my striped tail remains outside. Even though I’m terrified by being in this extraordinary place I feel more alive than ever. This is the adventure I was seeking!
After checking to make sure the coast is clear, I turn back to the plastic door to see if Brox has entered yet. As expected, my apprehensive friend is still cowering outside. I try my best to coax him in, “Brox, what are you doing bud? Get in here, I can’t do this without you.”
“I don’t know Rocco, this seems a bit too far. Watching from outside last night was one thing but going INSIDE the human’s den?!” he responds.
Brox is my best friend, but he sure knows how to pick the perfect time to get on my nerves. Tensions are mounting as I argue with Brox at our entry point, “Get your furry butt in here, we’re taking too much time arguing!”
Brox tries to convince me to turn back, “If you think about it, Snikt would never approve of us going inside the human den for any reason. We shouldn’t be here.”
“You have to pick now to voice those concerns?!” I bark back at Brox.
Brox defends his timing by saying “Well you are always so compelling. You make it so hard to say ‘no’ to your ideas. I didn’t realize how stupid this ‘Fresh Food Heist’ of yours was until we got to the door.”
“This is not the time Brox!” I tell him again.
All our arguing must have made quite a racket. I’m known for having a loud voice for a raccoon my age, and in a situation like the one I’m in currently, my voice tends to carry. The thought of grabbing Brox by the paw and dragging him in through the plastic door is coming into my mind when I hear a gasp behind me.
The noise makes my eyes go wide, my hair stands up on my neck, and my butthole clench in anticipating fear. I turn around and see the young female the other humans refer to as Tilly staring at me. She has an astonished look on her face that quickly turns into an excited smile.
For just a moment, all three of us are frozen in our tracks. Tilly is standing now in front of me, grinning and motionless. Brox is behind me, still outside the plastic door and he’s probably shaking with fear. I myself am caught between the two emotions of fear and excitement with the former quickly overtaking the latter. The moment of motionless ends when I hear Brox start to panic.
“Run!” Brox says to me as he makes a break for the tree line. Panic of my own has fully set in and I try to follow my fleeing friend. I’m unable to get any traction on the stone-like floor inside the human’s den and my attempt to escape is futile. My claws are skittering and scattering about in a frantic display.
To my surprise, Tilly reaches down and picks me up. Yet she doesn’t hurt me right away. Instead, she opens the entire back entrance door, walks outside, and carefully places me on the short grass.
“There, there little fella. I’m not going to hurt you,” she whispers to me.
I immediately start looking for Brox. He must have run faster than those pudgy little legs have ever run before, because I spot him looking back at me from the tree line. He looks terrified for both me and himself.
I feel the short blades of grass run through my paws and I follow my initial instinct to run. But something in the back of my mind compels me to stop just a few paces away the human that has just freed me. I turn around to face her. Something in the tone of her voice gives off the feeling that she doesn’t mean me any harm. She even sounds compassionate.
At the sight of me turning around Tilly’s face lights up with joy. She crouches down and holds out her hand toward me. In her outstretched hand is a cookie that smells like peanut butter. Now, I have heard many rumors about human food from my friends in our clan. Cookies are things of pure legend and peanut butter! Peanut butter is thee most coveted form of sustenance. I’m don’t know if this human named Tilly is aware of how valuable this cookie is that she is offering me, but I’m not passing it up.
“Go on little buddy, try my cookie. I made it myself,” she said to me.
One bite into that peanut butter cookie and I am in love. All the fears I am holding towards Tilly just melt away. There is no possible way someone who can make something like a peanut butter cookie, something so filled with love could harbor any ill will towards me.
I am literally eating out of the palm of Tilly’s hand now. I finish her delicious cookie and when I’m done, she does this peculiar gesture of petting me on the head. Here I am thinking the peanut butter cookie was the most loving thing she could do, and then she goes and pets me! Yeah, I’m definitely in love.
Tilly scoops me up into her arms and carries me back in to her den. Then she takes me into her own room of the den and lays down on her bed. We drift off to sleep with me resting in her arms.
The Human Den
Part 3 – Tilly
Animals are my passion and every day I try to make decisions that reflect that passion, but I never saw myself adopting a raccoon as a pet. Yet I acted impulsively and brought one in to my bed and snuggled with him last night. I just couldn’t help myself. The little guy was so cute and seemed to understand my intentions.
When I saw him huddled up against the doggy door it took us both by surprise. He seemed to be having trouble getting back out the door, so I gave him a hand and took him back outside. While carrying him he didn’t resist or scratch me. Instead, he just relaxed and let me put him down on our yard. I expected him to run back to the forest, and he had started to do so, but then he turned back. I gave him a cookie I snagged from the pantry and he became an instant friend.
Now I’m laying here in bed with him and he’s sleeping in my arms as cute as ever. I can’t even imagine what my parents would say if they found out. As soon as that thought crosses my mind, our dog (a black Labrador named Frigo) comes rushing in to my room. He’s sniffing my bed like crazy. He must be smelling my raccoon friend.
Frigo was surely going to find the little raccoon in my bed given enough time. Fortunately, my dad Frank comes in to tell me he made pancakes and bacon for breakfast. Dad sees Frigo, assumes he is just being nosey, and pulls him away from my bed. Then dad and Frigo leave my room. That was a close call. I’ll be sure to lock my room from now on.
My attention goes back to the small young raccoon in my bed and now he is wide awake. He looks a bit startled from the dog, but I soothe him by petting him. It does the trick. He seems more chipper now.
Looking down at this woodland critter, I ask myself “What am I doing? I brought a dirty, stinky raccoon in to my bed! I must be nuts.” I see the little raccoon react to my words and I wonder if he can understand anything I’m saying. “Yeah, I’m definitely losing my marbles.”
The little raccoon pulls on my pajama shirt sleeve. I ask him “What is it little guy?” Then he gets into a crouching position using only his hind legs and holds out his right paw. I just wait there for a second trying to figure out what he’s doing and then it hits me.
I realize the little bugger was mimicking me from the night before when I gave him a cookie. “You want a cookie?” I ask him.
He responds by jumping up and down and firmly shaking his outstretched paw as if to say “Yes, give me a cookie.”
“Ok buddy, I’ll go get you a cookie from the pantry,” I tell him. Walking out to the pantry I’m thinking to myself, “Did I just have a conversation with a raccoon? Did that raccoon just recognize the word cookie?” This has been the weirdest and most interesting 12 hours in all my 11 years.
“Tilly come have breakfast sweetie. You shouldn’t just have cookies for breakfast,” my mom says as I peek out from behind the pantry door.
“Aww, can’t I? just this one-time mom, please?” I plead to her. “I promise I’ll come back out and have breakfast in just a minute. I just want to have this one cookie in bed before I start the day.”
“Oh, alright honey, you can just this one time, but only because it is Christmas time,” my mother concedes.
“Thanks mom,” I say with a smile. “I’ll be out in a bit.”
Back in my room the little raccoon is bundled up in the blankets on my bed. The sound of me opening the door prompts him to peek his little whiskers out from his makeshift blanket cocoon. Sitting on the bed, I offer him the cookie. He excitedly jumps out from the blankets and carefully takes the cookie from my hand.
The next few days I have off for Christmas vacation. I spend them playing and talking to my little raccoon that I’ve named Rocco after my favorite pizza shop in town. He seems to like the name, and I think it suits him. In these short few days we become quite the pair. Rocco and I play together in my bedroom and out in the woods. There is something beautiful about a young raccoon playing in the woods, in his element.
Things haven’t gone completely bonkers where I’m having full vocal conversations with a small wild animal, but we do communicate with each other. Rocco has learned to recognize a few words like “cookie, Rocco, Tilly, woods, home, pet, play,” and a few more. He can even communicate yes or no with his body language. It amazes me how intelligent he is, and he keeps surprising me.
I know raccoons are nocturnal creatures. I like sleeping at night, and Rocco likes sleeping during the day, but since it is Christmas break, I don’t mind staying up late. Rocco and I are taking naps here and there. We split our time up, mostly by being awake during the day with a nap. Then he wakes me up at night for a few hours.
My parents still haven’t found out about him luckily, but I think Frigo has. Frigo is a good dog, but he doesn’t like having Rocco in the house. He growls at him if he sees him. I think the only reason he hasn’t hurt Rocco is because he senses that I care for him.
Whenever my parents aren’t home or asleep, I let Rocco come and go as he pleases through the doggy door. My parents are usually too busy watching TV to notice a small silent raccoon running around the house.
There are a few times Rocco has visitors come by. A chubby little raccoon that looks about the same age as Rocco will come down and visit him. I watch him from the windows. The chubby one keeps his distance from me. He is a skittish little guy.
Rocco meets his chubby friend and they seem to be happy to see each other. However, they also seem to be in some sort of a heated debate. I try and approach the two raccoons as if I’m a mom keeping her child from a scrap with the neighborhood kids. At the first sight of me, Rocco’s chubby friends flees to the tree line.
After his friend runs away, I stop behind Rocco. I’m afraid I may have upset the two of them. Rocco turns back at me and he’s acting a bit frantic. “I’m sorry Rocco. I didn’t mean to scare your friend away,” I try and comfort him as I pet his head. That does the trick as Rocco is now starting to purr in my arms.
That night while tucking Rocco in to bed, something out the corner of my eye catches my attention. It is a quick movement from outside my bedroom window. I lift the window and peer out to see if anything is there. I only catch the fleeting sight of a striped tail disappear behind the bushes about 10 feet away. I quickly shut the window to keep the cold December air out of my cozy bedroom.
“What did I just see?” I asked myself. “Was that a raccoon at my window?” I wonder silently. I decide it is too late to worry about passing shadows and crawl in to bed next to Rocco.
Tilly and Rocco
– Part 4 – Midnight Spies
Living with Tilly is a dream come true. I love being fed the best foods humans have to offer, sleeping in the comfiest nest in the world, and being shown so much love from my human companion. I don’t worry about bears or the cold. Brox is my best coon friend, but Tilly is definitely my best human friend.
Tilly and I get along great. We both wash our paws before we eat, love to eat peanut butter cookies, and enjoy playing. I show her the proper way to play in the woods and the snow. She shows me how humans wash their mouths with brushes every night with a very tasty blue ooze. Tilly and I also have fun in the bathtub with all the bubbles.
No matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to teach Tilly how to speak coon. No surprise, humans are TERRIBLE at learning any kind of Woodspeak. I’ve learned quite a bit of what she is talking about in human, but she doesn’t understand a single word that comes out of my fangs. So instead I get my point across by shaking my butt when I want to go outside or pointing to things if they catch my interest. It’s not perfect, but it is the best I can do when I’m working with a human.
Days pass with it being just Tilly and I. I almost forget about my raccoon clan in the woods until Brox shows up outside Tilly’s window one night. Of course, Tilly didn’t notice him because her senses are so dull. I can’t blame her, she is a human after all. But I shake my butt and she takes me outside so I can catch up with my old pal.
“Rocco you’re alive! I’m so glad to see you,” Brox says as he rushes in for a big hug. “I don’t know how you were able to escape, but I’m glad you made it out,” Brox says as he grabs my paw and tries to haul me off to the woods.
I yank my paw away from him, “Stop Brox. I didn’t escape. I like it here. I don’t want to go back to the clan.”
My words make Brox turn and face me. He’s got a suspicious look on his face. “Did they brainwash you? My mom told me about this one time. Humans brain wash coons with a big plastic box they have in the middle of their den. They even brainwash themselves by sitting in front of it all day long. It’s a real thing Rocco.”
“What are you talking about Brox, your mom is full of bear droppings. Humans don’t brainwash coons. That box is just what the adult humans do for fun when they come home. The human named Tilly is my friend. She feeds me peanut butter and everything,” I tell Brox.
“That’s exactly what a brainwashed coon would say. Peanut Butter!? It doesn’t exist Rocco. You’ve become a brain slave to the Man. Let’s go back to the clan. I’m sure Snikt will be able to fix your brain.”
Now Brox is getting on my nerves. “Snikt!? You think Snikt can ‘fix’ me? That old coot is so scared of humans he kept us in the woods far longer than he should have while our gatherers were injured almost every night. I already told you Brox, I’m not coming back to the clan.”
Brox heard how serious my tone was, “Well at least let me come by and check on you every once and awhile to make sure you aren’t brainwashed.”
I told Brox he could check on me as long as he didn’t catch the attention of the adult humans or their short haired wolf, they call Frigo. He may be a bit crazy, but Brox is my best friend. I’m not about to push him away.
Brox and I went back to catching up. I told him about all the fun things Tilly shows me each day. Brox starts to tell me about all the things going on with the clan when his jaw drops open. He let out a gasp and took off for the woods. My instincts kick in and I turn to see what scares my friend half to death, but I fail to notice at all. It was Tilly.
I wonder if she’ll get upset knowing I met another coon. That’s when she scoops me up and pets me. As expected, there is nothing to worry about. Tilly has no problem with me meeting with other coons. Life is good. A few more days go by. Tilly and I are still enjoying each other’s company and now I get to keep up with Brox. I’ve got the best of both worlds.
Tilly and I spend the entire day outside playing in the snow and sliding on the ice. When we come back in for the day, she takes me to the bathtub to get me all warm and scrub me clean. Then she takes me back to her room, wraps me up in her soft blankets, and we doze off for the night. I’m not the biggest fan of sleeping at night, but a coon can get used to just about anything with the right amount of peanut butter and snuggles.
Before getting in to bed that night Tilly spots something out the window. She opens it to see what is lurking outside. I catch a whiff of coon scent coming in to the bedroom with the cold air. It smells like Brox, but he’s with someone else. Tilly gives up trying to find out what is outside and shuts the window, but I’m convinced I’m going to confront them the second she drifts off to sleep.
A few minutes later Tilly is snoring in to her pillow fast asleep. Luckily when she opened the window earlier, she forgot to lock it shut. I carefully crawl out of bed making sure I don’t wake her. Slinking over to the window I pry it open just enough for me to squeeze outside. I leave it open just a crack so I can easily slip back in to Tilly’s bedroom after a few minutes.
“Brox I know you’re out here. I can smell you,” I call out to the howling wind. The night feels very cold on my whiskers. The moonlight is completely drowned out by the large flakes of snow falling from the sky. “Who is with you and why are you sneaking around. You know Tilly won’t hurt you.” A few seconds after I call out for him, Brox comes scampering out from behind a nearby bush. Behind him is another young coon we grew up with named Klaps.
“Hey Rocco, how you doing tonight? You remember Klaps right?” Brox asks me.
Brox is acting strange. Normally he would be asking me if I’ve been brainwashed by the humans’ big glowing box, they call TV. “Yeah, I remember Klaps. His dad and older brother are some of the clan’s best food gatherers,” I respond.
The cold air is getting to me already and the snow is falling so fast it is starting to muffle the sounds of our voices. I move in closer to the two other coons standing in front of me. As Brox and I are talking, Klaps is standing in the snow not saying a word, and he’s looking at me suspiciously. I decide to confront him, “What brings you here Klaps? What’s your deal?”
Klaps raises his paw and points his finger at me. “Me? What are YOU doing HERE?! Living amongst the humans like you are one of them, you have gone crazy Rocco!”
“Keep it down Klaps, the humans have a short haired wolf living with them. He’s not the friendliest towards strange coons,” I warn him.
Klaps ignores my warning, “Brox told me what you are doing here. The clan thought you had gone missing or that you were run over by one of the humans’ fast rolling machines,” Klaps continued to shout at me. “This is worse Rocco. I had to see it for my own eyes before I told Snikt and the rest of the clan that you have been living here with the humans we are supposed to be…”
Klaps is cut off midsentence by a loud barking coming from behind him. An instant later Frigo, the humans’ black short haired wolf, comes crashing through the bush behind where Brox and Klaps are standing. All three of us coons try to evade him as he sprints toward us with his jaws wide open. Me being the farthest away makes a clean get away. Brox also escapes Frigo’s fury. Then I hear a muffled crunching noise and Klaps cry out in pain.
When I turn my head back around, I see Brox running head first past me. He’s too afraid for his own life to turn and see what is happening to Klaps. Past Brox I see Frigo with his head down, fir and blood hanging out of his mouth. He’s snarling at Klaps just a few feet in front of him. Klaps is still moving, thank goodness.
I waste no time in trying to get Klaps away from Frigo’s wrath. Sprinting to get between the two of them I feel an immense amount of fear. The only reason I’m not running away with Brox is because that fear is overpowered by a need to save Klaps from his impending doom.
I reach Klaps and put my tiny body in front of him laying down in the snow bleeding from his fresh wound. Up until this point Frigo had kept his distance from me. He made it clear he didn’t want me in his den, but he never snapped at me. Tonight, was different. Tonight, Frigo had the taste of blood in his mouth and he wasn’t backing down. As I’m standing in between Frigo and his prey with my arms stretched out wide I heard Frigo lunge toward me. I think I’m going to end up in his jaws.
“Down Frigo! Down!” I hear Tilly yell as she jumps in front of me. She’s barefoot in the snow wearing her pajamas and holding Frigo by his collar. She must have heard all the commotion and leapt out of her bed room window just in time to save me.
I look up at her with my mouth wide open in amazement. She is standing there towering above me with the lights from her den illuminating all the huge flakes of snow falling around her. She is a force to be reckoned with tonight. “Tilly, my hero” I think to myself, “you saved me!”
Tilly swings her head around at me and gives me a look of distress. Tilly may be much bigger than me, but she’s struggling to keep Frigo under control as he barks in anger. I run towards Klaps to try and bring him to safety, but Tilly stops me, “leave him. Run inside Rocco. Go!” she commands me. I’m not a fan of leaving Klaps there in the cold bleeding, but I trust Tilly.
I jump inside her bedroom window that is still open, putting distance from myself and the furious canine. More than my first night of gathering food in the woods, my heart is practically pounding out of my chest. I contemplate getting up on Tilly’s bed for a better view of the what’s going on outside when all the sudden the bedroom door comes swinging open.
“Tilly what’s going on!? Are you ok?” It is Tilly’s father, the one they call Frank. He is one of two humans that are never supposed to see me in this house.
“Sweetie, is everything alright in here?” And that is Ruthanne, Tilly’s mother. She is the other human that is never supposed to see me in this house.
Both of Tilly’s parents are standing in her bedroom doorway staring at me laying on Tilly’s bedroom floor. The bedroom window is wide open. The snow that was at my feet outside had followed me in to the bedroom and is laying all around me. Her dad reacts almost immediately.
Frank grabs a blanket from Tilly’s bed and uses it as a makeshift net by throwing it over top of me. I panic by flailing around inside the dark blanket, but it is no use. Frank is too strong. He picks me up and carries me away without hesitation. I am unable to see anything, but I do recognize the sounds surrounding me. I know Frank is taking me out of Tilly’s bedroom, through the living room, and out to a colder part of the house. This colder part of the house is where Tilly’s family stores their fast rolling machines. I think they call them cars.
Frank takes me to a corner of this cold car storage room. He picks something up and it makes a metallic racket. Next thing I know I’m being shoved inside. “Stay in here until we can figure out what to do with you little guy,” Frank says to me. He sounds like Tilly, but with a little less compassion in his voice.
Once I hear Frank leave the room, I struggle to make my way out of the blanket. It takes a few minutes, but eventually I poke my head out to find I’m in a metal cage. Frank has imprisoned me with nothing more than a blanket to keep warm.
Rocco in the Box Trap
– Part 5 – The Jig is Up
Sound asleep in my cozy bed, just a few days before Christmas, I’m dreaming of introducing my family to my little raccoon friend. They accept him in to our home as a real pet. It is a pleasant dream. Then I hear barking coming from outside my window. Wait, that isn’t part of my dream.
Snapping to attention and out of my dream, I quickly pull back the covers of my bed. The barking continues outside. I have to go see what Frigo is barking, so I set both my bare feet on the hardwood floor. No need to check on Rocco or if he is still asleep in my bed, something tells me he might have something to do with all this racket.
I see my bedroom window is already cracked open, that explains the cool breeze I felt. Looking out the window I see Frigo biting into a small racoon laying in the snow. My heart drops. Frigo our dog has bitten little Rocco on the leg! But then I see another racoon running towards the wounded coon in the snow. I recognize him, the one running towards Frigo is Rocco.
I push open my window and jump out in to the snow. If Rocco is trying to help his little friend from being torn apart from Frigo he’s going to need my help. Acting fast, I grab Frigo by the collar and hold him back.
I see Rocco running towards the injured coon. “Leave him. Run inside Rocco. Go!” I tell Rocco for his own safety. I watch Rocco jump back inside through my bedroom window. Now I only need to worry about the injured raccoon in front of me.
Frigo is normally a good dog. It’s only when he thinks our family is in danger, he gets riled up like he is tonight. He must have heard all these little raccoons snooping around the house and come outside through his doggy door.
The snow is cold on my bare feet, but I kneel down next to Frigo to give him a hug and calm him down. It works. He doesn’t take his eye off the injured raccoon, but he stops barking and I feel his muscles relax a bit. I let go of Frigo’s collar to attend to the injured coon.
This little fragile coon about the same size as Rocco is lying in the snow out cold. I kneel down to him to see if he is still alive. I see the fur on his chest is heaving back and forth so he must be berating. Keeping Frigo back, I carefully scoop up the injured raccoon. The best way I could think to carry him was a bit odd. Using my shirt, I grabbed the bottom front of it and pulled up towards my face, making a large makeshift pocket in front of my abdomen. I placed the injured coon in there so I wouldn’t accidentally drop him.
Heading inside through my bedroom window and through to the living room, I see my mother standing in the doorway to the garage. Dad comes up the garage steps with a puzzled look on his face. I waste no time and beg them to take me to the Veterinarian Hospital in town.
Klaps at the Veterinarian’s Office
Normally Dad and Mom aren’t ones to spend money on wild animals’ veterinarian bills. However, my pleading got through to them and we take a car ride to the vet. My guess is they feel extra caring, because it was so close to the Christmas time, and they know how much I care for all animals.
The veterinarian takes the little injured raccoon in and stitches him up. He says the coon must stay there overnight and we should be able to pick him up in the morning. I’m glad the little raccoon is going to be alright.
Our family always seems to have our best conversations in the car, so on the car ride home from the vet Dad asks me why he found a different raccoon laying on my bedroom floor. It is clear the jig is up, and I decide to come clean to mom and dad. I tell them about the night I met Rocco and how he has been living in my room for the past couple of days.
“Honey, I know you care about animals, but you can’t just bring a wild creature in to our house, much less in to your bed,” dad lectures me.
“Now your sheets need to be cleaned for sure,” mom complains.
“He’s not filthy mom. I washed Rocco in the bathtub plenty of times,” I told her. But that seemed to just gross her out even more. “And dad, I know keeping him from you both was wrong, but technically I didn’t bring him in to the house. I found Rocco inside. I’m pretty sure he used the doggy door.”
“You know what I mean Tilly,” dad said. “I love that you care about animals, but we have to set some boundaries. No more wild animals in the house. Also, I don’t care what injured creature you find next, I’m not forking over my money for another vet bill unless it is for our own pets. I can’t believe I paid for this bill as it is.” Dad can get fired up over paying bills pretty easily.
Dad continues, “Tonight your little friend Rocco is staying in the garage. I put a blanket in there for him to stay warm. He will survive.”
When we all got home from the vet I just go to bed without another word. I think about going out to the garage. Sleeping with Rocco would be nice again, but I feel I have already disappointed mom and dad enough for one night.
The next morning, I am awoken by dad knocking on my bedroom door. “Tilly, your mom and I went and picked up your hurt raccoon from the vet. I didn’t know if you wanted to say goodbye to him and the one in our garage. We are letting them go soon.”
I walk outside with my parents to let the two raccoons go. Rocco looks at me with anticipation. I don’t think he knows what is going on, but I gesture to the woods as if to say, “go back.” My gesture and the fact that my parents are standing behind me seem to give Rocco the idea to go back with the other coons.
“Has anyone seen Frigo this morning?” my mom asks, and no one had.
“Last I saw him was last night right after he bit the little raccoon,” I said.
“Frigo! Come here boy. Where are you?” my dad calls out.
I notice all the noise catches the attention of Rocco and his little friend. I’m pretty sure Rocco can recognize the name Frigo. He might even know that we are looking for him. That’s when Rocco temporarily leaves his friend’s side to come and hug my ankle. It feels like a goodbye. Then Rocco runs back to help the limping raccoon. Now, instead of slowly making their way back to the woods, Rocco is at it with a hurried pace.
Snikt
Part 6 – Whiskers Held High
It is cold in here, it smells like oil, and this cage is too cramped. I’m glad Tilly’s father left me this blanket. It is so cold in here that without it I might freeze to death. There is one upside to my situation, being trapped in a cage all night really gives a coon time to think and reflect.
I know I like Tilly but being away from all my friends in the woods, not to mention my own mother, has gotten to me. I miss them all. In just a few short days living with Tilly has caused all this strife among both our families. Poor Klaps is injured, Tilly’s parents have imprisoned me, and I’m sure Tilly is in some sort of trouble.
Maybe it is time for me to go back to the woods. Maybe this life of soft nests, warm cuddles, and endless peanut butter cookies is too good to be true. I doubt such a misbehaved coon like me even deserves such a life of luxury. When… no, IF I ever get out of this cage, I should probably just go back to the woods and pretend none of this ever happened. Hopefully Brox doesn’t blame me for Klaps’ injury and maybe by some miracle Snikt will accept me back into the clan. Who am I to try and live a different life? I will just go back to scavenging for food like the rest of the gatherers.
All of the sudden, I hear human voices again. Those deep baritone sounds only come from Tilly’s dad. Next the garage door swings open and I feel the air pressure in this cold concrete room change. The lights appear over my head, they are blinding after all this time in the dark.
“Time to go home little fella, back to where you belong,” I hear Tilly’s father say. He lifts my cage up and carries me outside to the short grass. “Now stay still buddy while I open the box trap.”
The edge of my cage makes a terrible creaking noise and an opening appears for me to escape through. I quickly make it past the edges of the cage. No chance I’m going back inside that awful contraption he calls a “box trap.” Then I see Tilly standing nearby. She’s holding Klaps. He’s alive!
Last I saw Klaps we were getting in an argument but seeing him now I am filled with joy to see he is alright.
“Has anyone seen Frigo this morning?” Tilly’s mom asks out of the blue.
“Last I saw him was last night right after he bit the little raccoon,” Tilly responded.
“Frigo! Come here boy. Where are you?” Tilly’s father bellows.
Frigo, the humans’ short haired wolf must be missing. If he chased after Brox last night, there is a chance he found the clan! There’s no time to waste. I must get back to the clan before Frigo does any damage.
There is no telling what calamity awaits me back in the woods. My inevitable doom may even come today, but I am no coward. Tilly’s act of bravery last night, saving me from Frigo’s jaws, has shown me what makes a true hero. I will face today with my whiskers held high, but first I must say goodbye.
“I’ll return in just a moment Klaps,” I tell my injured friend. I leave his side just for a moment so I can embrace Tilly’s leg. Tears form in my eyes. I don’t know how long that embrace lasted, but it feels like one of the most meaningful gestures of my entire life. “Goodbye Tilly,” I think to myself. Then I make my way for the woods.
– –
Klaps is exhausted and I’m not much better off. We reach the outskirts of our clan’s home and I hear a commotion coming from over the hill. Breathing hard, my chest heaving from our haste, I take Klaps arm off my shoulders so I can get a better look.
“Wait here Klaps. I’m going to scout things out,” I assure him.
My paws fall silently on the moss-covered boulder so I can observe the situation without being discovered. I pop my head over and see Brox cowering by his mother among the crowd of our raccoon clan. They are all facing Snikt. He’s standing on top of an old tree trunk as if he’s about to give a speech. A few yards behind Snikt I see a large patch of wet mud. It appears something is moving inside, something big. I reposition myself to get a closer look. It’s Frigo! Just then, Snikt begins to speak.
“Fear not my fellow coons. The danger is over,” Snikt bellows to the rest of the clan. “The intruder has been subdued. With the help of the brave gatherers I was able to trap the short haired wolf in the sludge of the natural spring behind me.”
The pit is from the spring water and somehow Snikt had trapped Frigo inside.
“I have decided the vicious intruder should be put to death,” Snikt declares. “For if he should be left alive and set free, he would draw more short haired wolves and their humans to our clan.”
I hear gasps coming from the rest of the clan. It seems most of them aren’t totally on board with Snikt’s decision, and neither am I. Knowing full well that no one else will stand up to Snikt, I charge down the small hill I’ve been hiding behind.
“We can’t kill Frigo!” I yell to the clan. “He may be intimidating, but he’s merely protecting his own clan. ” My words startle the crowd below.
Among the other coons, my mother turns toward me. Her face is slightly confused, but mostly she looks relieved to see I’m alright. I see Brox in the crowd, and he looks just as relieved as my mother. The only face in the crowd not happy to see me is it’s patriarch, Snikt.
“Who are you to make declarations?” Snikt questions. “We thought you were dead but come to find you’ve abandoned our clan for half a fortnight to live amongst the humans. How are we to trust your judgement? How are we to know you haven’t been put under one of their spells?”
“You can question my character all you want Snikt,” I reply, “but I will not do the same in return. I propose only that we do not murder the helpless creature you have imprisoned.” I point my paw over to the shivering scared canine behind Snikt. “You suggest we commit cold blooded murder, but our clan is more than that. We are better than that!”
The crowd gives sounds of approval. Among them is Brox, “Mercy!” He screams. His display of courage brings a brief smile to my face.
“I have befriended a young human named Tilly,” I continue. Just last night she protected me from the very same short haired wolf that is behind you now. His name is Frigo, and he was only going to attack because Klaps was spying on the humans and myself. Frigo only acts out of protection.”
“We heard of this vicious attack,” Snikt barks in anger. “Brox told us how he killed poor Klaps!”
No sooner did Snikt speak of his demise when Klaps himself came limping over the hill behind me. Klaps’ mother and the rest of his family cried with delight at the sight of their son.
I speak again to the crowd, “No one was killed last night. Frigo’s bite was not deadly, but that of a warning. Although his human clan is to be respected, they are not bloodthirsty. Mercy is what we should show our prisoner. Peace is what we should make with the human clan.” The combination of my words and the sight of Klaps ignited the crowd in cheers of approval.
“ENOUGH!” Snikt roared as he leapt from his tree stump stage. “The humans and their short haired wolf are not to be trusted! I will kill the beast and be done with this!” His face is filled with his familiar look of pain and fear.
Snikt runs for the mud patch where Frigo is imprisoned. He’s caring a wooden spear in his right paw. The crowd begins to gasp in disbelief. I move as quickly as I can toward Snikt. I try and draw upon the bravery I’ve been displaying ever since I left Tilly’s hug early this morning. I’ll need it if I am going to stop the largest and most seasoned gatherer in our clan. By all rational understanding, I am no match for Snikt.
I race down the hill I’ve been standing on for the encounter so far. My paws are running as fast as they can possibly go. I speed through the crowd toward Snikt, but he is very fast. I fear there is no way I can catch him in time. That is when I notice I am not the only coon in pursuit of Snikt.
It isn’t Snikt’s loyal gatherers chasing after him. No, it is the clan mothers. All of them are running past me, quickly catching up to Snikt. The looks on their faces are fierce and determined. Their speed is frightening. At the head of the clan mothers is Klaps mother, Brox mother, and my own mom.
Snikt is still out ahead of the mothers chasing him. He stops running on all fours and stands up on his hind legs. Snikt reaches Frigo who is still shivering and whining in pain and fear. He pulls back his right paw with his wooden spear in hand, intending on ending the helpless canine’s life.
All three of our mothers reach Snikt just before he plunges his wooden spear into Frigo’s flesh. They tackle our fearful leader down in to the snow on the ground. It is an amazing act of heroism to see.
My mother has a hold of Snikt’s left hind leg, Brox’s mother has hold of his right hind leg, and Klaps’ mom has Snikt pinned in a full mount position. All of our moms look angry, but Klaps’ mom is practically breathing fire at this point. She pins Snikt’s arms to the ground and snaps his wooden spear in half.
“Let go of me right now!” Snikt screams in protest as he struggles in the snow. But the mothers aren’t letting up. They are strong and no longer listen to his fear fueled words. Instead, the mothers start freeing Frigo from the cold mud he is trapped in currently.
I look at my mom with so much pride. I had no idea she could be so heroic!
Part 7 – Goodbye for Now
Snikt’s reign as leader of our clan is officially over. The clan mothers made it happen and now they as a collective are stepping up to make decisions for our future. Instead of one coon making all the decisions, they decide what is best for all of us. It seems to be a change for the better. The Council of Mothers’ first decision was to be merciful to Snikt. Instead of voting to exile him from the clan, they let him stay with us.
I take it upon myself to escort Frigo back to the human clan. He’s shaken up, but there are no serious injuries from his time in the mud pit. I know Tilly and her parents will be able to warm him up and have him back good as new in no time.
While Frigo and I walk back to the human’s log den, I don’t feel the same resentment from him that I did before. Maybe he is too cold and tired, but I like to think he’s softened up to me for another reason. I like to think he’s found a deeper respect for me and for all raccoons.
Frigo and I make it to the tree line and continue on to the short grass surrounding the humans’ den. This is as close to the humans as I plan to go, at least for today. Frigo saunters on past me. He’s eager to see his beloved humans.
The short haired wolf stops for just a brief moment and turns his head back towards me. “Thank you for saving me Rocco,” he mutters in common Woodspeak. Then he continues his trek to the humans’ den.
My jaw dropped open just slightly in disbelief. All this time Frigo hadn’t said a word to me. I just assumed he had been too domesticated to speak with us wild folk. “No problem,” I offer in reply as I watch him make his way back through his small plastic flap opening the humans call a doggy door.
It doesn’t take long after Frigo enters the human den for the sounds of exaltation and relief to be heard from within. It still puzzles me why these humans love that short haired wolf so much. Another moment passes and I see Tilly peer outside from the window. She spots me.
Tilly makes her way outside and to the tree line where I’m waiting. “Hey Rocco! I’m so glad you are ok,” she says to me. “I don’t know what all happened but thank you for bringing Frigo home to us. Tomorrow’s Christmas and it wouldn’t be the same without our Frigo.”
I have no idea what Christmas is, but in reply I climb up her pants leg and in to her arms. We exchange a hug. Tilly pets me and makes me feel loved again. “I’m going to miss this,” I think to myself. Then Tilly pulls out a peanut butter cookie from her pocket. I gobble it up with excitement. I’m also going to miss those cookies!
“Enjoy that cookie. Dad says I’m not allowed to give any more of them to woodland critters,” she says. “I’ll miss you Rocco.”
Both Tilly and I shed a few tears. We both know this is goodbye… for now.
A special thanks to my girlfriend Shannon for coloring all of my illustrations for this story.
The first page was written in different handwriting from Amolika’s. In beautiful cursive handwriting and a much finer pen stroke it read:
“To my beloved granddaughter Amolika. No matter what your life brings, learn from it and write it down. Love, Poppa”
The next page showed Amolika’s chicken scratch, ball point pen handwriting.
My time in Cannes, France inspired me, possibly too much. On the flight home I found myself more confident and motivated than ever before. Six weeks of eating some of the best food in the world, drinking with friends on the beach, and swimming in the Mediterranean Sea had shown me who I wanted to be.
It would be foolish of me to write off medical school as something not worth my time. I have nothing but the utmost respect for the field, but it isn’t me. Healing others is a noble pursuit, but I’m convinced my calling is archeology.
When I think of the lost secrets this planet holds I feel compelled in the extreme. I’m no fool. I know heading down this path won’t lead me to Indiana Jones type adventures of punching Nazis and discovering the holy grail. But I refuse to believe all the mystery of this world has long dried up and is now kept on book shelves. There is still so much for me to uncover. There must be.
The non-stop flight from Nice France to Rome Italy took only an hour. Usually when I arrive home after traveling I am looking forward to staying somewhere familiar even if it is just for a short time before heading off somewhere else. My parents liked to send me all over the world. They say they want me to keep a global view. But this time, I dreaded coming home. It was sad when the plane touched down in Rome. No part of my conscious mind wanted my time in France to end. But alas, duty calls and something deeper than my conscious mind drove me to press on.
The warm air hit my face as I got off the plane. Familiar smells of street vendors frying suppli filled my nostrils and invigorated me with confidence. Something about being in a familiar place, being on my home turf, always makes me hold my head higher. A taxi took me to my parents’ home in the nice part of town. As I approached the front door I encountered something else that struck a familiar tune. This time it was the sound of my mother and father arguing.
My mother became so upset she started speaking in her native Hindi tongue when I decided to walk in the front door. I stepped inside with a forced smile as if I hadn’t heard anything. The two of them heard me enter and immediately stopped their bickering. They too felt it necessary to put on this act as if we were the perfect family, as if such a thing exists. My family loved each other dearly, but our opinions on many things differed.
Switching back to English my mother said, “Amolika you’re home from your vacation in France! We are so glad to see you.” I remember my mother speaking for my father as usual.
“I went for schooling mother. I went to learn French. It wasn’t a vacation,” I replied.
My mother was the most stubborn person in Europe. In her eyes, anything other than the pursuit of putting the letters “MD” behind my name was considered a vacation. She had spent her life working for the betterment of her family. Growing up I never saw her do anything for herself and she expected the same family-based altruism from my siblings and myself.
Avoiding the use of the word “vacation” again, my mother turned her sights to medical school within 30 seconds of me being home. “Well your finally done with your fun. The University of Milan is still accepting applications for medical school enrollment. You should get a good night’s sleep. There are plenty of admission essays for you to write tomorrow.”
Mother always liked to press medical school. She was always reminding me of that goal I was meant to accomplish. But France was the last stop on a very long period of travel. Before that I was in Oxford where I first discovered my love for archeology. She only agreed to let me go because of my grandfather, my father’s father. He seemed to be the only person who could convince her of anything.
According to my father, my Poppa had been preaching to my parents about me learning from around the world since the day I was born. He convinced them, or more importantly had convinced my mother that even Doctors benefitted from being well cultured. However, after a 6-year liberal arts degree from over 5 different universities my mother’s patience had seemingly run thin.
She wasn’t happy to see my pictures on social media of late nights out. It was as if seeing me smiling in those photos, seeing me happy rubbed her the wrong way.
I remember that night vividly. The memory of that conversation I had with my parents is magnified in my mind. My mother pressed me one last time as I was walking up the stairs to unpack my things from France. “We will see you bright and early in the morning. I will prepare breakfast for you and then you can get started on that application to the University of Milan,” she said.
Hearing my mother slide in that last remark, hearing her ignore my feelings of disgust for medical school that time pushed me over the edge. Walking up the stairs to my childhood room I froze. Standing half way up the staircase with my mother’s words still floating in the air around me, I was in a state of rage.
Looking back I don’t regret my decision that night, but I have no pride in my conduct. My entire childhood I had heard my parents argue with each other with fiery passion. But yet again, my mother spoke to me as a child. She spoke to my father as an adult by voicing her opinion and responding to his. Yet with me she just calmly told me what she wanted me to do and completely ignored my wants and needs.
After my stay in France I had felt fully myself. The warm Mediterranean sea had invigorated me, and I could no longer allow myself to be bullied by my mother’s passive aggressive tactics. I stood up for myself. I left.
Instead of climbing the rest of the staircase to my childhood room, unpacking my belongings, and facing the next day as a live-in member of my family, I turned around and descended the stairs. I chose to walk right out of the house without another word. It was doubtful they would hear me if I had spoken. I hadn’t even let my suitcase out of my grip.
“Amolika?” My father asked with concern in his voice. The bewildered words alerted my mother. She had already started in the kitchen to prepare for tomorrow’s breakfast no doubt.
In a shrill tone of panic and disbelief my mother called out to me as I started down the front door steps of my childhood home. “Amolika, where are you going?!”
With the force of my emotion fueled exit, the front door swung fast back towards the house and the handle made a clattering sound as it struck the exterior wall of the house. Rebellious rage inspired adrenaline to race down my neck into my back and down to my finger tips. Hearing my mother protest my departure only to have her voice drowned out by the loud bang of the front door’s metallic handle fueled my adrenaline even further. At the time it felt amazing. However, in hindsight I wish I would have said something along the lines of “I still love you.”
There is no need to dwell on the past. Hindsight is 20/20 and without that adrenaline I might not have chosen the same path for myself in the days that followed. The shell that covered me for my childhood had molted away. Leaving that night was the first stretch of a journey that would make me the person I am today.
That night I found lodging in a hostel on the edge of Rome. I slept on the bottom bunk under a complete stranger who’s feet smelled as if he had just finished the MOAB 240 endurance run and didn’t bother washing up afterwards. But I did not care about the stench. I didn’t just sleep that first night out from under my mother’s thumb, I slumbered. There was probably a smile laying across my face the entire night.
As cheesy as it may sound, I felt as if the next day was going to be the first day of the rest of my life. I felt I had truly left childhood behind me and was ready to find what kind of person I would be on my own.
The Journal of A_C_Unit 