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The Moth would like to thank our donors and sponsors for their generous support, with your help, we're able to continue our work virtually producing storytelling workshops and resources for students, educators and community organizations. Your support also allows us to continue to share stories through our radio, our podcast and our virtual shows, furthering our mission of building empathy in the world. One story at a time from the entire mothe community.

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We thank you. Welcome to The Moth podcast, I'm your host this week, Michelle deLaski, and I'm a producer and director here at The Moth. I really love listening to other stories because I think it helps widen the circle of who we see as worthy of our respect, empathy and concern. Usually when we talk about being empathetic, we lean towards other people. But today we'll hear two stories from people who went out of their way, maybe even to ridiculous lengths to extend that loving kindness to our animal friends.

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I also chose these stories because they make me laugh. And let's be honest, I think we could all use a laugh after the past few weeks. Our first story is from managed forests. Majdi told this at a story slam in Detroit, where the theme of the night was intention's. Here's Majidi live at The Moth. My backyard consists of 40 feet of grass. Two swans and a small lake, and these swans are both strikingly beautiful and strikingly hostile.

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They're not my favorite. I like the mallards and the turtles way more than the swans. My least favorite wild animal on the property are the Airbnb guests.

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When we move to D.C., we rented out the place.

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Our first bad review was a nightmare come true.

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A swan hissed at my daughter and we just didn't feel safe to stay. After that, our reservation rate plummeted. My chances of becoming a super host went down the drain.

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I'm petty and my inbox filled up with messages and questions about this one that I didn't have answers for.

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So these swans have been there long before me, but they've become a threat to my guests and more importantly, my income. So I called the city and received some surprising advice.

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Coyote urine in excuse me.

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You'll scare them away if you cover your yard with coyote urine.

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How am I supposed to do that? I give a coyote a Bud Light and gravel walk backwards. I mean, what do I do this. I'm from the suburbs, I don't know. Now I'm online on Amazon reading reviews for Coyote Urine. He was like, make sure you do it before they nest. So I ordered it on, you know, online. It's shipped in like three days. I'm reading all these reviews. And my favorite review, by the way, I bought it to repel skunks.

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Smells way worse than skunks. Yeah. That's what that's what I'm dealing with.

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I don't even know which one to buy, so I just sort of the results by newest arrivals and purchase the top one and not to sound bougie or anything, but I only buy the freshest coyotes urines. When the package arrived, the box was wet. It was leaking, it was damaged in transit. I can smell it from 50 feet away. This UPS driver had to drive around with it all day long. Anyways, I didn't have time to return it because it was nesting season. This had to be done now. The time had come. So I suited up for battle, felt like Rambo.

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If my neighbors were outside that day, they would have saw me wearing six garbage bags, spraying urine everywhere I go.

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And you made me this way. You drew first blood. Which wasn't a good idea because the wind from the lake kept blowing it right back into my face.

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I could have wipe it off, so I had to just let it sit there on my face like Puppeteer's. I called the city again. Your plan didn't work. The swan is still here and I have coyote urine on my tonsils.

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Help me. They said you have the right to shoot this one.

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And that's tempting. But I'm not going to shoot a swan over an Airbnb review, they said. Swans are considered an invasive species by law. But the swan was here before me, I feel like I'm the invasive species, it's the swans can be aggressive and hostile when it comes to their territory.

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I said that's because I'm trying to displace them from their land. You know, I'm trying to remove them from their land. And he said, but technically, the land is yours, so I don't have time to turn this into a Palestinian Israeli conflict. I hung up, you give bad advice. I changed my intentions rather than finding a way to get rid of them. I found a way to include them. I updated the listing, put photos of the swans fun facts about the swans, like how they mate for life, come visit Swan Lake.

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After that, you know, a lot of people were scared off by those changes, but I attracted all these nature lovers who know how to keep their distance from a swan. So now business is good. The Swans are happy. So treat god's creatures with respect, even if your government tells you not to. That was magnifiers, Majidi is a Palestinian American who currently lives in Arlington, Virginia. He's a medical sales rep by day and a comedian at night when he's not writing or performing.

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Majdi enjoys fishing and bargain hunting. Majdi says he's no longer airborn being the house, but his mother has actually moved in. He says she's slowly building a rapport with the Swan family. To see some photos of Majidi Swan Lake, head to our website, the mock morgue.

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Up next, Lucy Moses just a heads up. Lucy's story mentions the existence of sex. Lucy told the story at a story slam in Berkeley, where the theme of the night was Love Hurts. Here's Lucy live at The Moth.

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But evening, so my son is in the audience and it's a good thing because it's time for him to learn the truth about how Luke really died.

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So 10 years ago, I volunteered to be a foster mom for orphaned squirrel. I did my training at the Urban Wildlife Rescue Center and waited for the call. And early spring, it happened somewhere. Baby squirrel fell from a nest and he was placed with us.

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We called him Luke, who when Luke the ride was three weeks old and a three week old baby squirrel is really tiny, doesn't have any hair. His eyes, a fuse is still a secular ratel. It's the cutest thing ever.

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So it needed to be fed with a syringe, with a rubber nipple like little puppy formula every three hours and you need warmth. So I kept my hand in my pocket, brought it to work on the little heating pad that kept on my lap when I was working.

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And about a week later, a second squirrel was placed with us and we call him Buster Buster Nuts.

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And Buster was a he was a few days younger, but he was bigger than Luke.

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We could tell he was going to be a big guy someday. And they got along great. Everything was going great. Luke was a little more delicate. He let go of pneumonia and then he got diarrhea, which was really smelly, embarrassing at work. But we made it work and he got over it. And then he would do this thing that he would start screaming in pain like something was really bothering him.

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So I called Nyla from the urban wildlife. I was like, I don't know what's going on.

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He's just screaming. Suddenly she's like, Oh, I know what that is.

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Can you, like, really look at them closely? Let me know if maybe Buster is biting him. It was like biting him. I mean, those guys love each other. Why would they not pay attention?

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And yeah, Burster was biting him on the penis and she was like, oh yeah.

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You know, it's a common problem with orphaned baby squirrels where we've basically bursty is looking for is mom's nipples and there is no mom. So he found some finding something else and it's is bringing him comfort. But it's not so nice for Luke. I mean, if the squirrels have very sharp teeth, it's I was horrified. I was like, what do I do? So like, well, don't worry. It's just a face. Just keep them apart, OK?

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So I keep them apart. But that didn't work because they were really missing each other. They were like. Like whimpering and looking for the other one, I couldn't do it, so I put it back together. That doesn't make it so. I had an idea and know how to sew. So I took a little piece of felt a thread, a needle, and as soon as I saw underpants. And let me tell you, baby squirrels do not like to be put in underpants.

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I'm trying to squeeze Luke in his little square on the pants and he just wiggles out. So I had to improve on my design. I took another piece of film and really, like, wrapped it around the tail and then sweet, really tight. And it was a full on squirrel, Chastity Pence.

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So I put them together and burst. I tried to nuzzle but didn't get anywhere. It stayed on perfect. I mean, it wasn't perfect. It would get dirty, which fall off after that.

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But she was right after a while they seemed to grow out of it. And they also grew big enough that they had their own cage now. So I wasn't carrying them around anymore anymore. They had a big cage and there was like branches and fruits and nuts and they were just, you know, doing their own thing. They seem to have forgotten about this whole thing. And then we put a little hammock in the corner with, like a little fleece blanket.

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And this is kind of like the happy place where they could go sleep. But then we noticed that they could be bouncing and rocking.

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And so we took a peek and then the second was still going on, except that now Luke seemed to be enjoying as well. So we figured that best to learn not to use his teeth and, you know, it was consensual, so we figured it's OK, just whatever rocks that little hammock, we don't care. And a couple of weeks after Daddy graduated from an even bigger cage, this one was in the garden, was like six feet by six feet by four feet.

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Another volunteer came and helped build it. And at this point, you're supposed to kind of let them become while you're not supposed to interact with them anymore. So we just kind of let them be. And two of us, Quill's from another volunteer, came and stay with them and look.

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And the other two schools, I couldn't really tell them apart. They were all kind of the same coming in the back. Best I could tell apart, because like I said, he was big boned little squirrel and he was more human friendly, would come to the front when we gave them food.

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So he took me a while to realize that Luke was missing and noticed it was only two schools in the back. So I figured, oh, he must have found a hole in the cage.

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So I went in the cage, looked everywhere, and I couldn't find a hole. But that's not Luke's body. And he was dead in the hammock. And so I called the lady. She came and picked it up to do a necropsy, which is like an autopsy both for animals. And she told me, I know exactly what Luke died of.

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He died of a bladder infection.

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I was like, can you even die of a blood infection? And how can you be so sure? Well, I know for sure because his bladder was a very large and it wasn't very large because he hadn't been able to pee for a while and that because his penis was all infected and I was terrible.

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And I can never tell that to my kids because how can I tell them that?

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I mean, they were impressionable young boys that their pet died of excessive oral sex.

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But the son, you're grown now and it's time for you to learn the true. Yes, no, no, I've heard some time, but it almost never actually kills you. That was Lucy versus Lucy was born and raised in France 25 years ago. She moved to Berkeley, California, where she was raising two sons and occasionally a baby squirrels. There's so much I love about Lucy's story. I was a weird pet, have her as a kid.

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My parents weren't into animals, so no cats or dogs for us. And I had to make do with hamsters, hermit crabs and my personal favorite, a giant California now that I named slimy and truly loved with all my heart, but never a squirrel. I was very interested in how Lucy came to care for Luke and Busta, so I gave her a call to ask. Here's Lucy. I had a friend who did it, too, who had also signed up and did that program, and my kids really wanted to have a pet, so they had to ask him why I wanted a cat.

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My husband is allergic, one dog with a lot of work. So I was always trying to find a compromise. I was like, well, I guess we could get, you know, a guinea pig, but nobody's excited about that. So the fostering the squirrel when I saw my friend do it is imperfect because they placed them with you for like three months and then by law, you have to release them. So, you know, even if the kids are begging me to keep the pet again, I'm sorry, we're not allowed to keep this any longer.

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So it seemed like the perfect thing to me. They just kind of have them this intense pet experience for three months and then they go away. But it did turn out that it was a little more demanding. And when I had agreed to this, when I signed up for the fostering program, I'm a I'm a designer and I work from home most of the time. So I just find this whole thing is going to be at home. But then when the call finally came in, the school was placed with me.

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I was actually working at a client's office. I was going to every day and I was like, oh, my God. And I started a few weeks ago. And now I'm bringing this little creature that has to like in the middle of meeting. I'm like, I'm sorry, it's feeding time. I have to get my syringe. Tried to feed puppy puppy formula to his baby squirrel and then the Skovgaard that got diarrhea and was really smelly. And I was like, this is so unprofessional.

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I can't believe I'm doing this, but I want everybody at the office. But it was kind of cute. But there was a funny moment when we were in the middle of this and my husband was like, you know, Lucy, I know you. Three years from now, you're going to you will have forgotten all this terrible thing and all this and dealings with diarrhea and suckling and whatever. And you're going to want to do this again. So he got out the video and he, like, made a video of me just like, oh, my God.

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And it's like so embarrassing at work and it's smelly and this thing is going to die on me. And and I was just ranting and ranting and that my husband is keeping that video in case I ever say I want to adopt a baby orphaned squirrel again.

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That was Lucy Moses. We always ask our storytellers if they have photos they'd like us to share alongside their story on our website. And Lucy really did not disappoint to see photos of Luke and Bastar, including the infamous squirrel chastity pants head to the moth doggie extras. That's all for this week. If you have a story to tell, we're all ears. You can submit a story pitch right on our website at the MMORPG from all of us here at The Moth, have a story worthy.

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Michelle deLaski is a producer and director at The Moth, where she helps people craft and shape their stories for stages all over the world. Podcast production by Julia Purcell. The Moth podcast is presented by the Public Radio Exchange helping make public radio more public at preg.