Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, A production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio, Hello and Happy Friday and Holly Frye and
Speaker 1: I'm Tracy V. Wilson talked about our old animals this week.
Speaker 1: We really did. Boy did I wind up finding the
Speaker 1: middle part of it really irritating. It is really wild
Speaker 1: to me that people kept reporting those poor scientists as
Speaker 1: though they were these you know, ruthless killers pursuing anything
Speaker 1: for science, even death, Like it just looks like a
Speaker 1: pulp novel in some of them. It's like, no, dude,
Speaker 1: that's how you do it. I sort of think that
Speaker 1: it might have gone a little better had the researchers
Speaker 1: not given me a name. Yeah, because like, naming animals
Speaker 1: just it leads people to personify them a lot, and
Speaker 1: we do this all the time. We named pets. A
Speaker 1: lot of zoos named their their you know, most famous animals.
Speaker 1: There are some sort of wildlife centers that I've been
Speaker 1: to that intentionally don't name their animals because they're like,
Speaker 1: these are not people's pets. These are wild animals that
Speaker 1: live here a lot of time because they've had some
Speaker 1: kind of injury that means they can't survive in the
Speaker 1: wild anymore. Like the fact that they named it I
Speaker 1: think was just a recipe for stuff to go wrong.
Speaker 1: But also I got deeply frustrated at all of the
Speaker 1: news reporting that was like those dummy scientists killed the
Speaker 1: oldest clam. What a bunch of ding dongs. It's like, no, dude,
Speaker 1: I think it happens. I will say this because for
Speaker 1: a long time I volunteered at a big aquarium in
Speaker 1: animal husbandry, prepping diets for animals, and I went through
Speaker 1: I don't know, probably thousands and thousands and thousands of
Speaker 1: pounds of clam. There's not much to a clam. There's
Speaker 1: no brain there. It's a muscle and a system for
Speaker 1: processing waste in a shell. Yeah, I mean there's the
Speaker 1: other components. But like it. To me, it's one of
Speaker 1: those things where it's not to say that, you know,
Speaker 1: respect for all living life is a thing, but also
Speaker 1: it's not. It's just not the same as a To me,
Speaker 1: it doesn't bear sentience. That could be my own ignorance,
Speaker 1: but yeah, well, and I can totally like, if a
Speaker 1: person is vegan and doesn't use any animal product in
Speaker 1: any way, I think that's reasonable to extend that to
Speaker 1: being angry that these clams were killed for research. But
Speaker 1: like if you eat meat right and wear leather and
Speaker 1: like you know, thoughtlessly squash bugs in your house, I like,
Speaker 1: there's just the outrage. I'm like, you don't, you don't
Speaker 1: have you don't have standing for this. And I do know.
Speaker 1: I mean I I have talked to a number of
Speaker 1: biologists and animal keepers about it. That there is kind
Speaker 1: of constant debate that goes on about naming animals. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know, trying to balance between not wanting people
Speaker 1: to humanize them and also wanting people to have enough
Speaker 1: of a connection that things like conservation are really taken
Speaker 1: to heart. And it's a tricky balance. I don't know
Speaker 1: where the right thing is. I have the same like
Speaker 1: I went to a fundraiser at a zoo recently, and
Speaker 1: I was having the same like mental conversation with myself
Speaker 1: about like the questions about keeping the animals in captivity,
Speaker 1: but also like raising so much awareness for like habitats
Speaker 1: of these animals that are being destroyed and like getting
Speaker 1: people to care about it. Yeah. So I have a
Speaker 1: tough time with those questions a lot of the times.
Speaker 1: But I am so mad that there were headlines that
Speaker 1: were like the jerk scientists killed the oldest clam because
Speaker 1: they were thoughtless. And none of that's correct, No, not
Speaker 1: at all. That's one of those don't read the comments scenarios.
Speaker 1: I might have been less irritated had I not just
Speaker 1: worked on the next thing we're recorded today, which had
Speaker 1: some similar themes, and that I just I wound up
Speaker 1: finding profoundly irritating. I have fun stories, perfect because we
Speaker 1: did not talk about elderly cats or dogs. No, but
Speaker 1: do you know about Creampuff, the oldest cat on record? No,
Speaker 1: Creampuff was thirty eight when she died, and she belonged
Speaker 1: to a man named Jake Perry who lives in Austin, Texas.
Speaker 1: And she beat the record of the previous cat, Grandpa,
Speaker 1: who lived to be thirty four, who was also Perry's cat. Okay,
Speaker 1: and Perry's veterinarian has gone on record as saying like
Speaker 1: he has been treating his cats for like fifteen years
Speaker 1: or something, and that about a third of them have
Speaker 1: lived to be at least thirty, which is extraordinary. Huh.
Speaker 1: So people have been like, what is this guy doing
Speaker 1: that's keeping cats so healthy for so long with great longevity?
Speaker 1: Three times longer than old cats. Right right, right, Okay,
Speaker 1: before I say any of this, listeners, do not give
Speaker 1: your cats people food. Do not, because a lot of
Speaker 1: the things he's given his cats are things that your
Speaker 1: veterinarian will say, Please, don't give that to cats. Yeah,
Speaker 1: definitely on the no fly list. So I'm reading this
Speaker 1: from an article about him and Atlice Obscura, where he
Speaker 1: said that on top of dry commercial cat food, he
Speaker 1: also made them eggs every day for breakfast, turkey, bacon,
Speaker 1: and broccoli, and they got a little bit of coffee
Speaker 1: with cream, and then every two days he would give
Speaker 1: them an eye dropper of red wine to help their circulation.
Speaker 1: I will tell you this, I mean from personal experience,
Speaker 1: because I went through I'm going to make eggs for
Speaker 1: my cats every Saturday is their brunch. Did not agree
Speaker 1: with many of my cats eggs. And then I talked
Speaker 1: to my vent and she's like, oh no, a lot
Speaker 1: of cats can't tolerate eggs. So Mileer's me veried, Please again,
Speaker 1: don't feed your cats coffee and wine. Coffee is very
Speaker 1: much on the no go list because caffeine can really
Speaker 1: mess with the cat system. I don't know why he
Speaker 1: are so happy and lucky and fortunate and long lived,
Speaker 1: although he also it sounds like his entire house is
Speaker 1: set up for cats, like he runs documentaries for them
Speaker 1: and even puts trailers in front of them so that
Speaker 1: they'll stay. They're indoor only, which is always going to
Speaker 1: extend their life because the outside and their curiosity are
Speaker 1: a bad combination. And he has like runs built around
Speaker 1: his house, like up the walls and stuff, so the
Speaker 1: cats have lots of climbing and exploration space. They're all
Speaker 1: getting tons of exercise. We don't know, but he's got
Speaker 1: the magic touch, and people study him. Yeah. He is
Speaker 1: also advancing in age, so I think people want to
Speaker 1: know everything he knows. Sh hurry, I mean, who doesn't
Speaker 1: want a cat to be thirty four? Yeah. I think
Speaker 1: the oldest cat I've ever had personally was almost twenty yeah,
Speaker 1: and was a very old cat at that. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: mean I have a close friend who's had several cats
Speaker 1: hit twenty. She's obviously got a touch there. What makes
Speaker 1: me laugh is that two of them have been deeply
Speaker 1: in love with my husband. Oh yeah, to the point
Speaker 1: where she'll be like, this cat is getting very old
Speaker 1: and rickety. I don't know how long she has, and
Speaker 1: Brian will go to her house and the cat turns
Speaker 1: into Blanche Devereux and rushes down the stairs and is like, hello,
Speaker 1: a gentleman caller. He just says the magic touch that
Speaker 1: cats love him. But those two in particular loved him.
Speaker 1: It was very funny. We used to call them his girlfriends. Yeah.
Speaker 1: May we all have long living cats. I have a
Speaker 1: couple that are eighteen right now that I love very much,
Speaker 1: so I want them to be thirty four. We'll see then.
Speaker 1: The oldest dog is also still alive. I don't know
Speaker 1: how this is pronounced, because this dog lives in Portugal,
Speaker 1: and I don't know how they right. I'm triple checking
Speaker 1: yes in Portugal. The dog's name is Bobby. Bob I
Speaker 1: cute as pie, and Bobby is thirty one, and that
Speaker 1: is very old for a dog. He is a like
Speaker 1: a herding and livestock dog. And he is this russet colored,
Speaker 1: sweet little kind of barrel chested thing. He looks so cute.
Speaker 1: His breed is not what I'm familiar with. I may
Speaker 1: or may not mispronounce this is rifero do alentejo. I
Speaker 1: don't know what kind of breed that is it's a
Speaker 1: like I said, a livestock dog, so cute. And they
Speaker 1: attribute his his longevity to just living in a calm
Speaker 1: and peaceful environment. He has not had a lot of
Speaker 1: stressors in his life. He's very loved and very well
Speaker 1: cared for. So those two are adorable. We love I
Speaker 1: love an old animal. Greenland sharks. We think lived to
Speaker 1: be very very long, but we don't know how long.
Speaker 1: I think there are some three hundred plusers on record.
Speaker 1: And then I want to come back to Winston Churchill
Speaker 1: because Winston Churchill really did love animals. He's an interesting
Speaker 1: I understand why they are a Kagilian books written about him,
Speaker 1: because he really is quite an interesting figure. Pluses and
Speaker 1: minus is there. But one of the things that he
Speaker 1: did as part of his final arrangements was he wanted Chartwell,
Speaker 1: his country house to always have an orange cat named Jock. Okay,
Speaker 1: that was well cared for, because he had a favorite
Speaker 1: cat named Jock that Sir John Colville had given him
Speaker 1: as a gift. Sir John Colville was his secretary. And
Speaker 1: so the National Trust, we said, that's a National Trust
Speaker 1: site now has to take care of an orange cat
Speaker 1: along with the grounds. As part of the rules, they're
Speaker 1: on Jock the Third, But apparently Jock the Third is
Speaker 1: real bad about destroying furniture, so he can't go in
Speaker 1: any of the main rooms where the antis h. He
Speaker 1: is still very, very loved and has a pretty good life.
Speaker 1: It sounds like, but there have been some rules put
Speaker 1: in place for Jock. That's sure. I love it. I
Speaker 1: love it animals. They're wonderful and awful. I love him.
Speaker 1: I mean when I say they're awful, I like the
Speaker 1: bad behaved ones the best. Yeah, I'm that person who's like, oh,
Speaker 1: this cat destroyed your drywall. I'll take it. It's great.
Speaker 1: I love that cat. Great. Great. Oh that cat, you know,
Speaker 1: ruined your car, I'll take it. Sounds great. I'm reminded
Speaker 1: of the deer departed mister Burns turning on the stove.
Speaker 1: Oh he was the worst cat and the best cat
Speaker 1: I have. Only this sounds very silly, I'm sure to
Speaker 1: people that are not pet people. But mister Burns has
Speaker 1: been gone a little over two years, and I'm only
Speaker 1: just now to the point where I can talk about
Speaker 1: him again, Like, I really really love that dude. But
Speaker 1: in case anyone's wondering about the stove. We adopted mister Burns.
Speaker 1: He was a rescue that a woman who rescued a
Speaker 1: lot of cats had found trying to integrate into like
Speaker 1: a junkyard feral group that she was doing a trap
Speaker 1: neuter release program with. And they didn't like him. They
Speaker 1: thought he was like a chupacap brother. They didn't think
Speaker 1: he was a cat. I mean to look at this cat, right,
Speaker 1: he was a devon rex And he was very dirty
Speaker 1: at the time as well, because he clearly did not
Speaker 1: have the street smarts to live in a junkyard and
Speaker 1: she had scooped him up, and he looked very pathetic,
Speaker 1: and we took him and he became just my barnacle.
Speaker 1: He was my baby baby, and he was very smart
Speaker 1: and stupid at the same time. Like he would get
Speaker 1: in the shower with us, but he wouldn't close his
Speaker 1: eyes and says the water would hit him. He would
Speaker 1: just look frantic and be looking around. His body would
Speaker 1: stay still, but his head and I would be like,
Speaker 1: just close your eyes digged on and he wouldn't see it.
Speaker 1: And then one day we came home and found him
Speaker 1: sitting on the top of the stove. Our cats are
Speaker 1: not allowed on the counters, and we're actually pretty successful
Speaker 1: at keeping him off. But he was sitting in the
Speaker 1: middle of the stove with all four burners turned on.
Speaker 1: Praise Gredo, he did not set himself in the house
Speaker 1: on fire. Right. Uh. It's one of the reasons we
Speaker 1: now only have stoves with like safe the things. Even
Speaker 1: though he is now gone, I just don't want to
Speaker 1: risk it over again. Yeah. Yeah, mister Burns who was
Speaker 1: very bad and very wonderful cat, and I loved him.
Speaker 1: If you have very bad and wonderful cats, send us
Speaker 1: those pictures. I love them, especially if you catch them
Speaker 1: doing the mischief. That's the best part. One other day,
Speaker 1: I'll tell you about how he stole food from the
Speaker 1: toaster of it and then got mad at us for
Speaker 1: taking it from him. We had a very different milk
Speaker 1: sickness episode than what I thought I was going to
Speaker 1: be writing. Ah, but there are so many things that
Speaker 1: I want to say. First, Frankly, Ella Hugh Hall's depiction
Speaker 1: of Aunt Shawnee is very heavily stereotyped in terms of
Speaker 1: like how she talked and how she acted at all
Speaker 1: of that. It definitely reads to me like a nineteenth
Speaker 1: century account written by a white person about what they
Speaker 1: think Indigenous people are, Like, it's very stereotypical. All of
Speaker 1: that said, though, he actually makes it sound like a collective,
Speaker 1: collaborative effort between Doctor Anna and Aunt Shannie. He makes
Speaker 1: it sound like they were really partners working together. It
Speaker 1: does not sound like doctor Anna did it herself and
Speaker 1: Aunt Shannie was kind of an afterthought. Like one of
Speaker 1: the very earliest pages of the book makes this reference
Speaker 1: to Aunt Shannie, and he makes it sound like like
Speaker 1: she became part of their community and that they were
Speaker 1: really working together, and so like, I don't know if
Speaker 1: this really happened, even without the layers of like very
Speaker 1: stereotypical and kind of racist language, Like the whole story
Speaker 1: plays into some tropes about Indigenous people. Yeah, and like
Speaker 1: with all of that, like, I don't know if it's
Speaker 1: a true story. All of that said, though, like it
Speaker 1: really irritates me that this account really makes focuses in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways on Aunt Shannie, and like so
Speaker 1: many articles written in the last five or ten years
Speaker 1: make it sound like it was doctor Anna, and I
Speaker 1: just I found that annoying. I also found it annoying
Speaker 1: that anybody thought, ever that this was an appropriate book
Speaker 1: to use as your footnote in a JAMA article. Why, Like, why, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's weird. It is deeply obvious to me that it
Speaker 1: is not that kind of book. See my thing now,
Speaker 1: having heard you talk about because I didn't read the book,
Speaker 1: how much she became integrated in their community, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: and yet no one asked her name? Yeah, well, and
Speaker 1: that's what I'm just like him, excuse he says something
Speaker 1: in there that's like her name must have been really
Speaker 1: hard to write in English because I don't see it anywhere.
Speaker 1: And doctor Anna's journal, and I'm like, you really don't
Speaker 1: you seem to know that she had a husband named
Speaker 1: Hawkeye and that Hawkeye had been killed, Like well, and
Speaker 1: we have so many examples throughout history of white people
Speaker 1: kind of making their own versions of an indigenous person's
Speaker 1: name that are often screwy, but at least like an
Speaker 1: attempt was me somebody try? Well, yeah, And like sometimes
Speaker 1: there are like sounds that a person who's not a
Speaker 1: native speaker of a language right can like either really
Speaker 1: struggle to make or like can cannot their mouth cannot
Speaker 1: move that way. But then there's also like just a
Speaker 1: trend of making up different names and not really trying
Speaker 1: and like that. So this does have that like you're
Speaker 1: either telling me that you couldn't be bothered to make
Speaker 1: up a name for her, or that like, uh, doctor
Speaker 1: Anna could not be bothered to write her name, like what,
Speaker 1: there's questions there. I do not have the context or
Speaker 1: why Norman Ferrell had such a bee in his bonnet
Speaker 1: about this. I tried to find more information about this person.
Speaker 1: I found a couple of scattered references to someone who
Speaker 1: was probably him. He was local to the area, he
Speaker 1: lived in another town not far away. I think he
Speaker 1: may have owned like kind of an antique store slash
Speaker 1: estate sale kind of business, based on some newspaper advertisements
Speaker 1: and stuff. I don't know if he was just a
Speaker 1: very interested person in local history and felt very personally
Speaker 1: invested in debunking a story that he thought was incorrect,
Speaker 1: or if there's some other context going on, right, but
Speaker 1: like this like literally ten exhibits of things that he
Speaker 1: thought was evidence that the L. Hugh Hall's whole account
Speaker 1: was wrong. And I don't. I kind of imagine him
Speaker 1: as just like having a bee in his bonnet, and
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't really know. I thought about putting
Speaker 1: in this in the episode, but I did not in
Speaker 1: a weird and just honestly to me, upsetting irony, because
Speaker 1: there's an element of her story that is about escaping
Speaker 1: an abusive second husband who tried to kill her. Right
Speaker 1: there was an intimate partner violence shelter called the Anna
Speaker 1: Bixby Center named for her, which, unfortunately, as I understand
Speaker 1: it is now permanently closed after its directors were charged
Speaker 1: with fraud a few years ago. So it's like, that's
Speaker 1: just a whole like I think, as I understand it again,
Speaker 1: this like the shelter was something that the community really
Speaker 1: needed and now it is gone because of fraud that
Speaker 1: was perpetuated, which then just made it like a very
Speaker 1: weird irony that it had been named after somebody who,
Speaker 1: like the current account of her, has so many question marks,
Speaker 1: so I felt very weird about that. We also did
Speaker 1: not talk about the ghost story. Tell me, I love
Speaker 1: ghost stories. There is a doctor and a ghost story.
Speaker 1: There is a light that apparently you can see sometimes
Speaker 1: among the bluffs that is supposedly doctor Anna with her candle.
Speaker 1: I think searching for the hidden family treasure. I should
Speaker 1: have refreshed my memory on that aspect of it before
Speaker 1: coming in here, because I just wrote ghost story in
Speaker 1: my notes and I didn't write the tails down about it.
Speaker 1: I have a funny and ridiculous thing, yeah, that one
Speaker 1: of the people that we referenced in the episode had
Speaker 1: the last name Barbie Barbe, and it took every scrap
Speaker 1: of my will not to go Hi, Barbie. They're also
Speaker 1: the last names of Snively and Ferbie. Pretty good. That's
Speaker 1: a great pair of last names. Although I just I
Speaker 1: have so many questions about your methodology, so I want
Speaker 1: to stress we all make mistakes. You and I have
Speaker 1: made mistakes. We have sometimes made large mistakes. We try
Speaker 1: to correct our mistakes when we realize we have made them.
Speaker 1: And I don't want anybody who's written an article about
Speaker 1: doctor Anna to feel embarrassed, because, like we said, like
Speaker 1: it was a jama article, you would expect that it
Speaker 1: would be something you could cite, yeah, and that it
Speaker 1: would be accurate. There are just so many articles that
Speaker 1: are very specifically focused on celebrating this woman for an
Speaker 1: achievement that, even according to this incredibly problematic source, was
Speaker 1: not really her achievement. Like it was this woman known
Speaker 1: as Aunt Shawnee who said it's this plant. Like, I
Speaker 1: found that very frustrating. So yeah, and it may not
Speaker 1: have happened at all. We don't really know. It's really
Speaker 1: really hard to tell at this point. I think because
Speaker 1: in the local area that book and ballads from the
Speaker 1: Bluffs like sort of became a part of the cultural
Speaker 1: conversation as they first came out and kind of influenced
Speaker 1: people's quote memory of this woman. So like, how unless
Speaker 1: there is you know, as yet undiscovered family documents that
Speaker 1: could offer some more substantiation, really hard to tell. What
Speaker 1: is family lare and what is family law that came
Speaker 1: from this book decades ago. I did not want to
Speaker 1: get into a thing where I was debunking this entire
Speaker 1: story to day, but that's what happens. You can't go
Speaker 1: back talking about elderly tortoises. Yeah, yeah, uh. And it
Speaker 1: was just sort of a weird irony that the other
Speaker 1: thing that we recorded today was also included an element
Speaker 1: of things that have been re re reported in news
Speaker 1: reporting from the like problematic correct accounts. Yeah yeah, not
Speaker 1: the best, not the best, tricky trickies. Yeah. So a
Speaker 1: happy Friday everyone if you're from southern Illinois and I
Speaker 1: just ran rough shot over your entire cultural tradition. Really sorry,
Speaker 1: this was not what my plan was, but this book
Speaker 1: is not a great source. Feel free to send us
Speaker 1: a note if you like. We're at history podcasts at
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio dot com. Did I already say have a great
Speaker 1: weekend or a great you know, Saturday, Sunday at work?
Speaker 1: Whatever's on your plans. I remember the years when I
Speaker 1: worked every Saturday and Sunday, and sometimes those were great days,
Speaker 1: and sometimes there weren't. Whatever's happening, hope it's good stuff
Speaker 1: you missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.