Episode Transcript
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0:02
hi wild things do you have
0:04
kids? do you know, any
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kids or are you just a big
0:08
kid yourself? then boy, have
0:10
i got some exciting news for
0:12
you i
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i am no longer just a podcast i
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am an author and my very first book
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is coming out on october eleventh the
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search for sasquatch a middle grade
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nonfiction books based on the first
0:25
season of wild things is coming your
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way it's a beautiful hardcover
0:29
book with full color illustrations is
0:32
also an audio books narrated
0:34
by yours truly they're available for
0:36
preorder right now and you're probably
0:38
gonna wanna get wanna copy of both to
0:41
pick your curiosity here's a sneak peak
0:43
or is it a sneak listen
0:45
of the introduction
0:49
introduction
0:50
this
0:57
whip like bendy branches scraped
1:00
down the sides of our giant black pickup truck
1:02
like a witch's fingernails
1:04
i try not to lose my lunch as we bounce
1:07
the long a bumpy gravel logging road
1:09
in the hinterlands of washington's olympic
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peninsula
1:13
just as i wrote down the window to get some fresh
1:15
air same corson my beard and mountain
1:18
man died hold to a stop
1:20
in front of a padlocked steal games i
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looked around not sure if this is the right
1:24
place we were in the middle of nowhere
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that shame killed the engine hopped
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out of the truck and fifty keys
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from his pocket the giant lock
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popped open and shane loosens
1:36
the chain so he could swing the gateway
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this was it
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suddenly got so excited that i forgot
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how bars the i just spent
1:44
we were about to go deep into a patch of
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tangled woods and towering spruce trees
1:49
to see something that was off limits to
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well just about everyone
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shane hopped back into the driver's seat
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sporting an ear to ear grin
1:59
not much further up the road he said clearly
2:02
feeling as excited as i was about what
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he planned to show me we inch
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forward through the sickening underbrush
2:09
and underbrush and bumpy minutes later
2:11
we had gone as far as the trip could take us
2:14
we had to have it from there
2:16
i'd met shane about a year ago on a camping
2:18
trip in oregon but i didn't
2:20
really get to know him until a few months
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later because that first time
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he wasn't you excited about talking to me
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why
2:28
though
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let me introduce myself my
2:31
name is laura and i'm a journalist
2:34
my job is asking lots of questions
2:36
and writing about what i learned for others to read
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sometimes that can make the people i talk
2:41
to pretty nervous especially if
2:43
they think someone is going to make fun of them and their
2:46
ideas and beliefs and shame
2:48
i think she felt particularly worried because
2:51
of one very specific interest
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the
2:54
that's right
2:55
they said
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that watch himself
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now if you've never heard of bigfoot
3:01
before picture an enormous
3:04
ape like creature that's ten feet tall
3:06
and might weigh as much as one thousand pounds
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it's covered in hair walks on to feel
3:11
like us and the giant footprints
3:14
behind or at least
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that's what we think it looks like there
3:19
are lots of fascinating and terrifying
3:21
stories about big foot from people who claim
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to seen or heard although no
3:26
one has ever been able to show any real
3:28
scientifically accepted
3:29
proof
3:31
the chain more that what was hidden out
3:33
there in the woods could help make the case
3:35
for bigfoot i
3:37
jumped down from the trick presumed myself
3:40
with big spritz is a bug spray and
3:42
tightened the laces on my hiking boots then
3:45
i straightened up and followed shane into the wall
3:47
of shrubs and blooming rhododendron bushes
3:50
as we plans through the underbrush shane
3:53
kept a brisk pace he clearly
3:55
knew where he was going well i seriously
3:57
struggled to keep up behind
3:59
me
3:59
the trick disappeared
4:02
these i thought to myself i hope
4:04
i don't have to find my only back huckleberry
4:07
brambles caught on my clothes and left read
4:09
raise scratch the down my arm it
4:12
all looks so beautiful and wilde but
4:14
i didn't have any time to take in the scenery
4:17
then shane disappeared down a steep slope
4:20
and i lost sight of him for a second stop
4:23
still the dead quiet
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i couldn't even hear him moving anymore just
4:28
as i started to worry i pushed through
4:30
another thick wall of shrubs and
4:32
found him standing quietly at the base some
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trees he looked at me and
4:37
then looked down
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here we are this is it he drawled
4:40
ho hum like it was no big deal
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he moved a little bit farther and gestured at the
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ground i looked to where he was pointing
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and my jaw dropped if
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i had been trying to play the part of a calm
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and unflappable reporter i had
4:54
just failed whoa
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i exclaimed not at all professionally
4:59
that's what what i had expected but
5:01
it was definitely what i'd hoped for
5:04
this is this is really
5:08
we stood in front of a pile of intertwined
5:10
sticks and branches woven together so
5:12
carefully that they look like they've been made into
5:14
a giant nest it was at
5:16
least eight feet across so
5:19
big that i could have comfortably lane don't
5:21
and i could even have stretched it
5:23
in fact shane had already done this himself
5:26
when he came out here before it
5:28
felt like a mattress he said with a grin i
5:30
felt small
5:31
very small
5:33
the truly looked like a bird's nest
5:36
it could have been have bird's nest but
5:38
of course as far as i knew no
5:40
bird on the planet made nests that
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size
5:44
that wasn't the only nest either shame
5:47
pointed out six others nearby
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hidden between clumps of trees with
5:51
a few small ones tucked in the low branches
5:54
he said there were others to but farther
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away and a little harder to get to
5:59
you would have been amazed when we first came down here
6:01
he said obviously pleased with my
6:03
reaction three years ago
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when we first saw these they looked even better
6:07
then these weren't just slapped
6:09
together the we he referred
6:12
to was the olympic project a
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bigfoot research group same belongs
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to
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a few years ago the man who owns this
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land found the nests when he was out
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inspecting the trees on his property they
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confuse them so them asked the olympic
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project to come take come take at them twenty
6:28
one and all the see if they could puzzle
6:30
out what had made them
6:32
shane who had spent his life hunting
6:34
and fishing and camping knew
6:37
that these nest things were really
6:39
unusual it's not a bear
6:41
bed or an elk bad or a deer bed
6:44
he scraped at a tree pulling off bits
6:46
of loose park and gathering it along
6:48
with dead leaves small branches and other
6:50
debris into a loose sloppy pile
6:53
that's what a bear bed looks like these
6:55
are nests and in all my years i've
6:57
never come across anything like this
6:59
he said they look more like really
7:01
nests than anything else the
7:03
really make nests i asked myself
7:07
later i looked up gorilla nests online
7:09
and shame was right gorillas do
7:11
build giant nests similar to this
7:13
one
7:14
there aren't any gorillas in this part of the world
7:17
before i could ask more questions shane took
7:20
off down the trail again yelling back over his
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shoulder for me to keep five
7:24
minutes later he screech to a halt
7:26
the scanned the woods like he was lost
7:29
no were lost and some giant
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nest building thing is out here with us
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i thought to myself then
7:36
he wrapped his hand around the branch of a nearby
7:38
huckleberry bush and showed me the end
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of it it had been broken off i
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looked at him blankly i didn't get then
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he showed me another branch and another
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and another all the same
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the huckleberry branches have all been snapped
7:53
and their leaves stripped clean to make these
7:55
nests there are no
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mark something had to have hands
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to say
7:59
it off strong hands
8:02
because some of these branches are a couple of inches
8:04
thick you can't just break something like
8:06
that half he pointed out
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i gave it a try
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it would have taken someone or something
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much stronger than i was to do it and
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that nest we just saw was piled high
8:17
with those branches
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what did it all add up
8:21
something with the strength to break sick branches
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same thing that makes next something
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that likes the solitude of the woods
8:29
the i was not the teeny bit surprised
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when same finally said what we'd both
8:34
been thinking
8:36
then able to big maybe
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bigfoot may be safe
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we're not saying it's definitely sasquatch shane
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said were saying know what made
8:46
this nests there unknown nests
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with and hair mixed in with the foliage
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and unknown animal behavior behind
8:53
the goal is to get to the bottom of the mystery
8:57
i knew shane lean toward the possibility
8:59
of bigfoot but he wanted to be careful
9:02
for starters they still
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didn't have the right kind of evidence to prove
9:06
shane also knew that most of the world dot
9:09
bigfoot was nothing more than a big joke
9:11
amiss he'd , laughed at by
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enough people that he didn't tell just any
9:15
one about his interest and even
9:17
though i wasn't sure bigfoot was real bigfoot
9:19
had started to understand how people ended
9:22
up tromping around up the woods looking
9:24
for evidence then
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shane said something that was super important
9:29
and reminded me why i came all
9:31
the way out here into the middle of nowhere something
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made this maybe we can say
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for sure that big but made them but these
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things are weird
9:40
why wouldn't we wanna ask questions
9:43
asking questions that's the point
9:45
of all this because i was standing in
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front of something i couldn't explain and
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while part of me felt a little silly
9:51
about being there i mostly just
9:53
wanted to find out more i mean
9:55
i'm a journalist it's kind of my job
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but i felt really curious
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what is big foot what do we know
10:02
about this creature wire there's so many
10:04
sightings and so little proof
10:07
why are all the photos that we do have
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so blurry i had no idea
10:11
if i find sasquatch or well
10:13
some other explanation but i wanted
10:16
to get to the bottom of the bigfoot phenomenal while
10:19
we had been talking we'd hyped back to the nest
10:21
site shane bent over and looked
10:23
more closely as section of the nest were
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a wedge like a big fat slice of
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pizza had been removed i
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wasn't the only visitor he brought out here
10:32
a few months back a scientist came
10:34
to collect samples of the nest hoping
10:36
to gather clues about this mystery in the woods
10:39
clearly a a lot of other people also
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had questions and
10:43
i i wasn't sure any of of us us knew what what we we were
10:45
were going going to find
10:48
that
10:48
was the introduction to the first wild things
10:50
up the search for sasquatch, produced
10:53
by fox to put ink in partnership with kids
10:56
is available, starting, october 11th
10:58
and you can pre the
11:00
audio book and the right
11:02
now go wild thing calm
11:05
for more information
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