Troblems

He realized his dogs have an unusual skill. Now he uses them to help save turtles.

By Cathy Free

John Rucker was a high school English teacher in North Carolina when he stumbled upon something interesting: Whenever he took his two dogs hiking, they would run into the tall grass and bring him back box turtles. Like a gift, his Boykin spaniels would gently lay them at his feet, unharmed.

He mentioned it to a few people, and soon, biology teachers from the University of North Carolina started reaching out to him and asking whether he would take their students out so they could put transmitters on the turtles to study them.

Several years later, the outings were so successful, Rucker was fielding calls from wildlife veterinarians and zoologists who were studying turtle populations.

“Because turtles aren’t easily detected in the wild by the human eye, I could see that I was on to something,” said Rucker, now 73.

Now, two decades later, Rucker’s spaniels are a highly in-demand, specialized team trained to sniff out box turtles by following their urine trails.

The dogs — Yogi, Ruger, Jenny Wren, Lazarus, Scamp, Skeeter and Rooster — travel across the country with Rucker helping to track turtle populations and identify threats and diseases.

The New Caledonian crow, who knows how to specifically build a tool in order to build another tool, never engages in play. These motherfuckers are smarter than some people with the right to vote, and they are Extremely Serious Birds. They don't have time to play, they got work to do and kids to raise.

And then there's the kea, straight-up titled "clown of the mountains", that has a specific vocalization for "playtime!". Scientists decided to try what happens if they play the Play Call for two fully-grown adult keas that are together in an area and can clearly see there is no other, third kea to make the call, and they just go "great idea, disembodied voice! it's TIME TO FUCKING PARTY!" and start wrestling.

Point Reyes, CA

They were usually run by someone who was about the right age to be some adult’s parents or grandparents, and in the case of the two Korean restaurants matching this description, they didn’t speak English. Universally though, they were very pleased to see customers, very proud of their cooking, and very very interested in keeping us far away from the aforementioned serious men in nice clothes. And despite having huge dining rooms and never having more than a couple customers, they never went out of business.

Also, because I am very, very stupid and sometimes don’t think before I talk, I once said loudly, over the phone, while sitting in one of these places, “Hey! Yeah if you want to meet us, we’re eating at [place]. You know…[place]? You totally know it. The Front, on Warwick st!”

They started stocking my favorites because I mentioned them within hearing range once, would tell their “vendors” to move out of the way if we stopped in. I walked a different route home and got harassed one night and they asked after me. When they found out what happened, they declared “Consider it taken care of, you should never be afraid around here.” Never happened again.

One of the older men at the party took me to my neighborhood and dropped me off out front (the car was literally too big to fit down the small neighborhood streets) and said that I had his blessing.

Which was confusing, but I was drunk, so whatever. Then I went back to the restaurant about a week later and the mother said, “the family approves of you. You may marry our son if you wish and be welcomed.”

I did not marry him, but wow. There were no hard feelings, either. They still helped out if I got harassed by the cops (which happened a lot in these smaller towns with no foreigners) or anything like that.

So no one really questioned the motives of this large Korean family that moved to town and had a martial arts studio built.  I mean, maybe we should have, since no one ever moves there, but we didn’t. (Or maybe we did, but I was eight so idk)

Anyway, the kids’ class had about a dozen of us, which was a lot for any sort of organized extracurricular, ranging from my brother at five to me at eight.

It was great.  Hapkido was a lot of fun, and the older man who ran it made sure we had a class at least once a month or so where we learned self defense well enough that we’d actually be able to apply it if the need ever came up.  Occasionally his “friends from Korea” would come to “visit him” and they would guest teach a class.

By the time I was thirteen, I had made my way through quite a few belt levels, and he gave me a part time job helping teach the new under five class.  A few of them had joined the volunteer fire department, the moms helped with bake sales at the elementary school, my sister was really good friends with the daughter that was her age, and they were all a pretty big part of the community.

Until one day when we’re in class.  At this point, I was still in the kids’ class, despite an offer to be moved up to the adults’ one, because I’d finally managed to convince some of my friends to join and they were in the kids’ class.

So, picture this.  An older-boarding-on-elder Korean man teaching martial arts to a dozen or so kids.  Parents sitting in the adjoining room, watching through the one way glass and gossiping over tea.  The door slams open, and a half dozen police officers come in, guns out and yelling.

We all dropped to the floor, freaking out, because nothing like this happens ever.  One time, my neighbours got high and lit their car on fire and drove it into a ditch, and the fire fighters had to wait around for three hours before the police finally showed up, that’s how much they hate having to drive out to our town from one of the near-ish cities.

But here they were, interrupting our class.

And the teacher?  He booked it out the back door as soon as they entered.

Turns out the studio was a front to smuggle drugs from Korea.

I was only thirteen so nobody really wanted to give me all the details and it may have been 2010, but the elementary school was still the only place with internet, so I couldn’t even look it up.

From what I remember, though, the police caught the hapkido teacher pretty quickly.  I’m not sure if they got everyone from the family or not, but I do remember that one of his friends was supposed to be visiting and teaching a class later in the week, so I’m pretty confident they caught him too.  I’m pretty sure they were some sort of mafia, because I remember overhearing a conversation between my parents about the amount of paperwork and meetings my dad had to do to convince the higher ups that he had no idea he was letting mafia members into his fire hall.

I also had to go to a couple of interviews with the police since, technically, I worked for them.  It didn’t take them long to see that I was just a nerdy little thirteen year old, and that there was no way I was actually involved in this mafia.  I got some serious street cred, though, and when I started grade eight in the neighbouring city that fall, I got a lot of questions about what it was like to be in a mafia.

I still don’t know how the police caught onto them, or why it took them five years.  I definitely would have kept my job at the studio through high school if they hadn’t been arrested (it was infinitely better than working as a cashier at the tiny grocery store), and I sometimes wonder how much that would have gotten me mixed up in their real business over time.

REALLY good

fun fact, marsupials actually originated in South America, which used to be connected to Australia via Antarctica.

marsupials colonized both antarctica and australia, but about 30 million years ago the three continents broke up and went their separate ways, ending up where they are today.

obviously things didn’t end well for the antarctic marsupials, who died out, but australian marsupials pretty much had it made! they were the first mammals to colonize the continent and they didn’t face competition from placental mammals until much much later, in the modern era.

south american marsupials, however.

when south america eventually drifted north to slam into north america like a wayward bowling ball, the Great American Biotic Interchange happened! which is a fancy way of saying that animals who had before been limited to a single continent now had the run of the whole western hemisphere, and entire species rampaged back and forth over the new central american land bridge for millions of years in an intercontinental evolutionary war.

and unfortunately, it was a war the south american marsupials lost. they were outrun, outgunned, and just all-around outcompeted by the north american placental mammals, who took their place in the south american ecosystems as things finally began to settle down.

all but one, anyway! 

in the confusion, opossums had managed to move north and establish a foothold for themselves in north america, making them the sole marsupial survivors of the Great American Biotic Interchange war. today, they can be found across all of the americas!

they’ve been out of contact with the rest of opossum-dom for well over 30 million years, and that’s why they look so different from the modern australian possums. show some respect to these tenacious survivors!

My mum says she just thinks about real world stuff? All the time? Like jobs she has to do and the like?

I can remember lying in bed when I couldn’t have been any older than six mentally constructing self-insert Lord of the Rings AUs, I reckon a solid 90% of my waking life is spent with at least a background noise of some fictional scenario running through my mind, and I just find it completely fascinating how different people’s brains work because it had genuinely never occurred to me that that wasn’t just How Humans Functioned.

I know for me adaptive/maladaptive daydreaming was a huge way of managing both my sensory issues (by acting as a buffer between me and my physical environment), and the constant low dopamine levels of ADHD (by having an imaginary storyline giving me constant little mental ‘reward’ in the form of comfort and joy).

For me, daydreaming in order to fall asleep serves both purposes: it helps my mind tune out environmental distractions (noise from the fan, the wrinkles of the bedsheets) and allows my brain to relax into a mental state that is final calm and safe enough for sleep. The downside is, when I can’t find a compelling storyline, my routine gets disrupted and sleep issues ensue.

So if I remember right he sent the sister a heads-up beforehand and the sister was like "holy shit do it", and he showed up in a pink, frilly dress, and sneakers. No makeup, jewellery or anything, just this bulky, hairy dude in a dress for no particular reason.