Turtle vs. Toilet, a Monster in the Closet, and a Surprise Possum

0:00Support for Criminal comes from Ollie. Your dog's well-being starts with their food. And that's why Ollie delivers fresh human-grade food that your dog will love. Head to ollie.com slash phoebe, tell them about your dog, and use code PHEBE to get 60 % off your welcome kit when you subscribe today. Plus, they offer a happiness guarantee on the first box. So if you're not completely satisfied, you'll get your money back. That's O-L-L-I-E dot com slash phoebe and enter code PHEBE to get 60 % off your first box. Support for this show comes from strawberry.me. Be honest. Are you happy with your job?

0:36Or are you stuck in one you've outgrown? Or never wanted in the first place? Sure, you can probably list the reasons for staying, but are they actually just excuses for not leaving? Let a career coach from strawberry.me help you get unstuck. Discover the benefits of having a dedicated career coach in your corner. Go to strawberry.me slash unstuck to claim a special offer. Carrie and Clayton Law live in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I've been a listener for a while, so I was super excited to hear from you. Carrie's a huge fan. Okay. Clayton, you're like lukewarm.

1:21Exactly this time last year, they'd hired some people to build a fence in their yard, and they planned to pay the fence installers in cash. Clayton went to the bank and withdrew the money in 50s and 100s. The bank teller sealed it in an envelope. And so I set it down on the counter and, you know, went to go do something, talked to Carrie, and then came back. And I just kind of had a WTF moment, and it was hard for me to process what I was looking at. And then he started kind of panicking, I think. Yeah. It had only been about 30 minutes, but the envelope wasn't on the counter. The money was all over the floor in small, wet pieces.

2:04And Carrie, he yelled for you. Yes, yeah. So we both work from home. And I just start hearing Clayton saying, he ate the money. And I'm thinking, what? He what? He ate the money. Their dog Cecil, a hundred-pound golden doodle. Cecil was just standing there over the pile of money, just shredded, consumed. It was just all over the floor. How much money? $4 ,000 total. He had never done anything like this in the past ever. And so it was hard for me to process what I was looking at because we used to, you know, leave dinner out. We used to eat at the coffee table and watch some TV. And you could leave, you know, a steak dinner or a cheeseburger or whatever on that table, go to the kitchen, open a bottle of wine, talk for a little bit, come back.

2:55and he would still just be sitting on the couch, you know, not, you know, touching it at all. So I was very just shocked that he did this. I mean, he hadn't just kind of torn these up. He'd also eaten the bills. Oh, yeah. You start to assess the damage and you're like, all right, how much is actually gone? Are there any more fuller sized bills? And as I'm like just going through and looking under his toys and his dog bed, And I looked in the water bottle, and there was a corner of a$100 bill. It was just like the number is 100 right in the water bottle. And I was like, oh, well, that's great. You were able to wash that down.

3:34They called the vet, who said to keep an eye on things, but that at 100 pounds, they weren't too worried about Cecil. Did you then ask the next question, or are we going to get the money back? immediately, you know, Carrie is probably one of the most, like, just resourceful researcher, like, can you exchange this? What's the process? So she's Googling it, as I'm just trying to, you know, figure out what our next steps are. But later that night, it was like 2am. And you have a dog, so you understand, but it's the proverbial, like, sound of a dog that's about to throw up, you have like a 15 second window before it all comes out.

4:16And so I hear that and I snap, snap away, jump out of bed. I'm like, no, no, no, not on the carpet and just got him on the tile. And he threw up and it's 2 a.m. So I'm just like, I'm just going to clean this up. And I grab a plastic grocery bag and some paper towel. And I realized, wow, there's like chunks of bills in here, like a lot. And, you know, I thought about turning the light on and going through it, but I was like, you know what, I'll deal with this tomorrow. So I just put it in the bag, tied it shut, and then I put it kind of low, but then I was like, wait, I don't want him to get back into it.

4:52So I put it really high up on the cabinet so there was no possible way. And then, you know, the next morning, sure enough, there were like hundreds in there all chewed up and stuff. And what do you do? Do you just do like put it in a colander and how do you clean? What do you do? so luckily we have a utility sink and so we use that and some tupperware and just in some like dish soap and um just kind of washed it a few times and by the time i had started that process clayton had taken cecil to go out you know to the bathroom for that morning um and was noticing that there were also hundred dollar bills sticking out of what cecil was depositing in the yard and so that was when we realized that to get the rest of the money we were going to have to just follow him around for a couple of days with plastic bags it was um and and you kind of you've seen dawn soap where you know hey it can clean you know oil spills off of penguins and ducks so we're like all right well if it can do that i'm sure it can take excrement off of dollar bills and so It did.

6:01It's a great job. Yeah, it was just the process of following him around in the backyard. And there was the challenging part was that there were a bunch of leaves on the ground, too. And he likes to poop and then walk and then poop and walk. So I'm trying to keep in my mind like where these are so I can go find them. And it was, yeah, lo and behold, just tons of bills in there and enough so that it was worth going through. Yeah. So what exact sentence did you say to the bank when you brought the bills back? So first I had called and I just explained the situation and they're kind of like laughing.

6:40I don't think they really believed me at first whenever I'd said the amount of money. I think they probably kind of thought I was joking. And they said, you know, we were able to tape it together and have the serial numbers on both sides. we could get it exchanged for fresh bills. So I'm thinking, okay, we're going to have to do this. So we had this like massive jigsaw puzzle of these washed partial bills that I had to put together, which took several hours. And so once we had that all taped together, I took that to the bank with me. And I just remember standing in line. And I think, Clayton, did you come with me for that?

7:21Yeah. Clayton was with me. I remember standing in line and, you know, people are there just going about their daily business. And then we go up to the clerk with this plastic bag. And I think we brought gloves for them and explained that I had talked to somebody at the bank the day before. They said we could exchange these bills. And they're kind of looking at me. And then I explain what had happened. And somebody in the back goes, oh, that was me you talked to. And so she was laughing and comes over. And I think she was in disbelief by the amount that we had brought in. Do you think that, you know, there was something about this money, like that he that this this is better than a steak?

8:05I mean, did he kind of sense that this was real valuable stuff? So whenever I whenever I talked with our bank about this, they were not surprised at all. They said that they have a lot of customers that have dogs that will eat money. They did mention that they've never seen this amount. I think it's you know like somebody's dog gets a 20 but they said they think it's because it passes through restaurants and it picks up maybe food smells would be their best guess I'm not sure but something about it smelled good enough to take that risk for him I think that's pretty disgusting what you just told me about the smell how much money did you end up getting back It was around$3 ,500, I think by the end of it, give or take,$150.

8:59Did you talk to him about it? Did you try to show him some of the bills and say no? Yes, we did. I just asked him, why? Why did he do that? We were never mad at him. I remember we were watching TV and he's laying on the couch and he likes to watch TV, so he's watching TV. and we just all start laughing because we're like looking at this dog knowing that there's a few thousand dollars inside of him and he's just coolly watching TV like it's not a big deal.

9:36For the past three years, one of our last episodes of the year has been stories about animals and it's always one of my favorites to make. Last year, there was a story about a denture-stealing mouse, a cockatoo named Harry who snuck onto a cruise ship and was given a cabin of her own, and a cat named Onion who could find his way into anything, even a rice cooker. He was just perched, like, kind of half on, half off the rice cooker, like a gargoyle, and, like, scooping rice into his mouth. But it was really hot, you know, because it was, like, fresh rice. but he wouldn't stop eating it so he was complaining that it was hot while continuing to do it.

10:19I now duct tape the rice cooker as well. And as always, the story that's become a tradition from the New York Times in 1908 about a large dog that the paper described as a splendid Newfoundland who rescued a small child who'd fallen into a river outside of Paris. The dog was rewarded with a steak And then, two days later, another child fell into the river and was rescued by the same dog, who got another steak. It kept happening, almost every day. People in the area were starting to worry. And then they discovered that the dog was pushing the children into the river himself, so that he could claim his reward.

11:02The headline read, Dog, a Fake Hero. It's that time of year again. Today, stories of animals really going for it. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal.

11:25This spring, in Durham, North Carolina, where I live, someone called 911 and told the operator, there's a noise that just won't stop, and I'm very tired, and I want to know what the heck is going on. She described the sound as an alien spaceship. Around the same time in Newberry, South Carolina, the police department started receiving noise complaints about some kind of industrial machine running. The sheriff said they'd also received complaints about a constant noise that sounded like a siren or a whine or a roar, and that some people had even flagged down deputies to ask what was happening. When officers responded to the caller in Durham, North Carolina and the complaints in Newberry, South Carolina they discovered that they were all coming from the same source cicadas This spring, for the first time since Thomas Jefferson was president two types of cicadas emerged from underground at the same time There were trillions of them They find their mates by being very, very loud so loud that scientists who study them wear earmuffs.

12:39The Newberry, South Carolina Sheriff's Office issued a statement that said, although to some the noise is annoying, they pose no danger. Unfortunately, it is the sounds of nature. Here's another story about a 911 call. North Ridgeville Police. Hi, yes. I'm walking from the Elyria train station to my house in North Ridgeville, and a random pig just came up and started following me. A pig, you said? Yes. Okay. It seems very keen to say what can you go. Okay, I'll have an officer head up that way. Police Sergeant Demir Kuduzovic was on duty. This was North Ridgeville, Ohio, around 5 a.m. There's a bar nearby called the train station, and Demir said that his first thought was that the caller had been at the bar and had had too much to drink and thought a pig was following him.

13:42But Demir and another officer went anyway. And as we're getting close, we see the guy, and he's waving us down, and we see a pig right next to him. It started to run. It was just basically trying to, like, not get caught. So it was kind of running in the same area as we were trying to kind of grab it. Eventually, they got the pig into the police car. It sat in the back seat. The police department put up a Facebook post about what had happened. They included a picture of the pig in the back seat of the car. The pig is kind of big. It looks to me like it weighs 50 pounds, with black, bristly hair.

14:27Within a couple of hours of posting it on our Facebook page, the owners called up and they were looking for Zoe. Someone's pet, who dug her way out of a fenced-in yard and taken herself for a walk.

14:50In September, a woman on an airplane traveling from Norway to Spain opened her in-flight meal and, as one passenger said, quote, a mouse jumped out. Reportedly, the situation was very calm. Although, the man sitting next to her told the BBC that he tucked his pants into his socks, quote, so the mouse would not crawl up his legs. The plane made an unscheduled landing in Denmark. A spokesperson for the airline said, quote, we made a very normal landing, not an emergency landing, which had been wrongly stated in some media, in order to change aircraft and catering, which is a fully normal procedure.

15:35All of the passengers were put on a different plane and continued on to Spain. We'll be right back.

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16:56Download today. This was one of those unexpected situations that was not on my 2024 bingo bucket list. Don't play that. In September last year, Ashley Klass was renovating her 100-year-old home and pregnant with her third child. Her oldest, Sailor, had just turned three. And she ended up, you know, starting to have night terrors. She kept saying, there's monsters in her closet. Ashley says at the time, Sailor was obsessed with the movie Monsters, Inc. And for those who don't know, Monsters, Inc., the movie, is about monsters literally coming out of your closet. So we didn't really put too much into it because we thought, okay, a combination of she turned three, big feelings.

17:47You know, she loves this movie about monsters coming out of her closet. And I'm pregnant. Things are changing. She's starting to see us get ready for our third child. But Sailor kept telling them she was sure that there were monsters in her closet. And she kept getting scared at night. We actually, we got this water bottle that we called Monster Spray. And we just kept it by her bed and said, you know, if you were scared at night, just spray it. It's going to protect you, you know. And my husband got into the closet. She'd point where it was, got into the closet and said, there is monsters in there.

18:21and my husband would pretend to karate kick and fight whatever monster and say, oh, I got him. We're good. It didn't work. Sailor started sleeping with Ashley and her husband in their room. But she would sleep instantly when she slept with us. Did you at any point kind of think to yourself, well, okay, maybe it's not monsters, but this is a really old house. Yeah. you know we looked at all the different ductwork we looked at all the different avenues of you know what could be making like a weird noise and so i even i even got the house blessed because i thought could it be haunted i mean because there was she was so adamant and i did not want to tell her it was in her mind but at the same time when you're watching a movie that coincides with what you're saying at night, you know, that was our first instinct, was that there was monsters in her closet from Monsters 8 movie.

19:21And then, around the end of October, she stopped talking about the monsters. And she was sleeping back to sleeping in her room, no issues. Ashley had her baby in mid-February. And then, a couple of weeks later, Sailor started to say there were monsters again. and we had again we started off with my husband and I doing monster sprites started with my husband and I doing the ninjas kicking in the closet started we did all those things all over again to you know kind of alleviate some of her concerns I mean were you kind of thinking you know what I'm exhausted I have this brand new baby there are no monsters this is the I might be at the end of my rope on this one with the monsters in the room.

20:11100%. And then, on the first nice spring day of the year, Ashley remembers that she and her husband spent the day outside with the kids. And I noticed a clump of bees. I pointed to my husband, I said, oh my goodness, it looks like there's a wasp nest outside our attic vent. Ashley called the pest control company, and they came out and said it was honeybees. They wouldn't intervene because honeybees are endangered. So after a lot of calls, Ashley eventually found a beekeeper who would come over and have a look. He ended up finding with my husband the size of a ballpoint pen cap in the corner of the attic vent.

20:55That's how small it was. And said, okay, they're coming into the house. Let me see where they're going. What's underneath the floorboards. And that's when my husband said, that's our daughter's room. Ashley wasn't home at the time, but her husband called her and put her on speakerphone while the beekeeper headed towards Sailor's room. He had a thermal imaging device that he just connected to his phone to show heat maps. And so bees, he says, they produce a lot of heat, especially if they're honeybees, because they're making honeycomb and they're producing honey. And then he went into my daughter's room and he went through each panel and he was like, nope, not here, not here.

21:41And then he went, oh, my God. And my husband said it lit up like Christmas. It literally looked like a man was in the wall. And, you know, that's the first thing we thought, oh, my God, what is in there? The beekeeper said that that is the highest, tallest honey hive that he has ever seen in his 25-year career. And that's when my husband and I, we realized that that panel that he, my husband sent me that picture, it was right next to the closet. 65 ,000 bees. and did you immediately think oh my god we were giving this kid a fake spray bottle yes 100 % we were like oh my gosh and you know how did this happen the beekeeper said because it was a 100 year old house it was just a freak accident because 100 year old homes don't have insulation it created this huge gap in between each of the wall panels each of the studs so that it created this huge, beautiful home for them.

22:52He also told them that the reason Sailor had stopped hearing them during the winter was because the bees were dormant during those months. And they started getting ready to pollinate again right around the time Sailor said the monsters were back. What did he do next after you found out where the bees were? So we had him open the wall, and it was like a horror movie. The bees just came pouring out, and they just started dropping honey everywhere in a room. Just imagine, like, if you're outside and it's raining, it would be if it's raining honey. And there was just droplets of honey all over her toys, her books, her clothing, her dresser, everywhere.

23:37There's thousands of bees pouring out of this wall. The beekeeper started scooping up the bees and putting them into a box with mesh panels. And Ashley and her husband went to pick Sailor up from preschool. They told her what had happened on the way home. You know, we, you're right. That was the biggest thing is that we wanted to make sure we told her, you know, this is a, I was right for life. So we brought her home. and we brought her to the bee box and we said, you know, are those, is that the, is that the sound that you were hearing? She looked straight at us in the eyes and was like, yep.

24:20Like, you guys finally understand me. Yep, this is it. That's the noise the monsters were making? Mm-hmm. Okay, we're gonna get, we got those monsters. Goodbye monsters, get out of here. Hi, Winner Bee! Is she there? She is. Can you say hi to Phoebe? Hi, Phoebe. Hi, Sailor. How are you? I see the bees. Oh, you're talking about bees. Oh, yeah, we're talking about bees. Do you remember when you heard sounds in your room? Mm-hmm. What did it sound like? Did it sound like monsters? It sounds like bees. Yeah, it sounded like, well, you were right. I guess it did sound like bees. Well, Sailor, thanks for talking.

25:15Um, I like bees. I'm glad you like bees, Sailor. You were close to a lot of bees for a long time, so I bet you're going to like bees for the rest of your life. Yes.

25:38Earlier this year, a rumor started going around that there was a small black bear hanging around the road near my house. I was in a place where there weren't really any black bears, and I was intrigued. Could it possibly be? I started worrying about my new dog, Eight, going outside. She was only seven months old. I knew she was big, like 80 pounds big, and strong, but not strong enough to take on a black bear. She isn't much of a fighter, except when I'm trying to take the millionth sock that she's stolen out of her mouth. My father calls her socks. I started being extra careful on our walks. I steered clear of some of the trails in the woods near streams.

26:24I have no idea if black bears like streams, but I figured that's where I would hang out. Then one day, I was walking eight up our road, and a woman yelled out, There's the bear. I panicked. I was looking everywhere. And then I realized that the woman was pointing at eight, who was happily wagging her tail, oblivious to anything wrong in the world. When we got home from our walk that day, I told everyone I'd seen the bear.

27:02How long have you been interested in reptiles? Honestly, most of my life. Patrick McKnight works with reptiles. How many reptiles do you own today? I can't give you an exact number. It's somewhere between 1 ,000 and 3 ,000. What? How many are in your house? So in the house, we only have two. We have two little geckos. We have a facility where we breed ball pythons. And so we have a fairly significant number of ball pythons, and then we have the four tortoises. They used to just have three. Big turtle, little turtle, and medium turtle. And then a friend of theirs asked if they could take another one in.

27:51The friend didn't mention the size. He's probably about 180 pounds at this point. He's big. What is the difference between a turtle and a tortoise? In my head, turtles like to get wet and tortoises don't. That's all I know. That is. That is more or less the exact. Tortoises do technically fall under the turtle family. And so if you were to call a tortoise a turtle, it is technically correct. People get a little bent out of shape, but, you know, it is what it is. But, yeah, basically, if it likes to go in the water, it's a turtle. And if it doesn't want to touch water, it's a tortoise. Patrick moved the gigantic turtle in with his other three at their reptile facility.

28:29But then a tree fell on it, and they had to remodel. He and his wife moved the tortoises into their house. He says the tortoises mostly spend their time walking. He called it patrolling, usually the perimeter. And if something gets in the way of them walking in the perimeter, they're like tiny tanks, and they're not going to slow down or, you know, halt too much. They're going to try and brute force their way through. And so, you know, whether that be a chair or a wall, whatever it is, if it's in their way and they're not happy about it, they're going to try and get through it. And so, you know, you'll see pictures or videos of them, you know, all but walking through, you know, drywall and things like that, just punching their way through because it kind of got in the way.

29:13If both Patrick and his wife were leaving the house, they'd put up baby gates. One day, they came home to find the baby gates torn down. And we're like, oh, great. And we kind of figured the tortoises had broken, you know, had a prison break at that point. Patrick heard his wife yelling. And I was like, oh, man, this can't be good. And I walk in and I see the horror scene. He sent us a photo of what had happened. We couldn't figure out what we were looking at. There's a toilet on its side, knocked away from the pipes. There's water all over the floor. And little pieces of lettuce, a lot of them.