Behind the Scenes Minis: Raccoon Cranberries

00:00:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class, A production of iHeartRadio, Hello and Happy Friday. I'm Holly Frye and I'm Tracy d Wilson Olly fry and I can't figure out how to do the thing I do all the time, which is hot about with dark episodes, we just forget how sometimes sometimes we talked about unusual White House pets. This week we did do that. I love talking about animals, Obviously, I am tickled by the misinformation that pops up around these. I love that we could mythbust that whole John Quincy Adams having an alligator thing. Yeah. I liked talking about Tad Lincoln, who doesn't get a lot of play right, but sure sounds like quite a kid. Unfortunately, Tad did not live very long ere he died when he was eighteen.

00:01:02
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:01:02
Speaker 1: The Lincoln's really had Like Mary Todd Lincoln had so much heartache in her life.

00:01:09
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:01:09
Speaker 1: I know she can be a little divisive in some ways, but I also just my heart goes out to her through time. Yeah, but I do love the idea that they could not could not possibly resist letting Tad have his pet turkey. I have so many questions about that turkey. Like the turkey was living inside, right, so presumably and turkey's pooping in the house. Yeah, probably just seems inconvenient, I mean, annoying. That's how pets work. Yeah, unless your cats don't use use the bathroom, well I think.

00:01:50
Speaker 2: But they go they have a designated place. I know.

00:01:55
Speaker 1: I feel like a turkey might just be doing it wherever.

00:01:58
Speaker 2: Maybe.

00:01:59
Speaker 1: You and I also a conversation that we asked Casey to cut because it was not really relevant. But here in the Boston area there are wild turkeys that can be really aggressive, and so I was like, what is the personality of this turkey exactly? And you had said that there was there's no suggestion that the turkey was ever aggressive, So like, that's good. Yeah, but I'm still like, did we have random turkey poop all over the White House? I mean, listen, the Coolidge White House was probably much more of a mess. Sure, Or are they putting the turkey in a diaper? Probably not. It's a thing that can be done. Yeah, that's true. You know, I don't know nobody ever discussed the bathroom habits of the turkey. No, nor did they discuss the bathroom habits of Rebecca raccoon. Yeah, but I do. I do know that raccoons can be litterbox trained. Yeah, Raccoon poop can also carry some things that are hazardous to people.

00:03:05
Speaker 2: Yeah, I have a lot of all of these animals.

00:03:08
Speaker 1: I mean, we said in the show, like the wild animals should not be kept as pets.

00:03:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, they are.

00:03:16
Speaker 1: In addition to the fact that they can be like a lot more destructive to a human built environment than a domesticated pet animal would be a lot of times, it's just not good for them to be kept as pets. Like it's it's very different from their temperament and their needs for you know, space, and whether they roam, whether they need to have the community of other animals right to really be There's so many things, so many.

00:03:48
Speaker 2: I will yeah, I will say this.

00:03:50
Speaker 1: What I kept thinking about in writing this episode, and particularly writing about the Coolidge White House, was that, like, the Coolidges clearly had big hearts and loved animals, but they also were not and did not know any animal behaviors. Okay, sure, And where was that science in its development at that time is like also a question. Yeah, it didn't exist at that point. Nobody was really considering the emotional needs of animals and what they might want. At that point, all of these things were happening like in the context of the time that they were happening in in which people's perceptions of animals were very different in a lot of ways than today. But it still feels worth saying when doing an episode like this, like number one, pets, wild animals do not make good pets for a lot of reasons, and also just don't give people wild animals or any animals as surprise gifts. No, And I did want to mention that in relation to our listener mail, because our listener mail mentions that she got her dog as a surprise gift from her husband. But I I wanted to point out before anybody can say you should not do that in that case, I don't want her to ever get attacked, because it was clear they had started talking.

00:05:07
Speaker 2: About a dog before then.

00:05:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, so that was There are certain circumstances where yes, you could give someone as a pet as a gift, yeah, but as a true surprise it's a bad idea always.

00:05:18
Speaker 2: Well, and it's like if.

00:05:19
Speaker 1: Like you were just say, like if you and your partner or you and your family or you and whoever have had discussions about getting a pet and the care of the pet and who's responsible for what, and like you've made a decision together about a pet happening, and then there is a surprise puppy under the Christmas tree. That's not what we're talking about. Yeah, we're talking about surprise. The letter carrier has arrived with a raccoon and a crate. Yeah, that was intended for food, but that's a part of the nuance. But like that, that's just a live animal that you have sent to a person without talking them about it.

00:05:56
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:05:57
Speaker 1: I also feel like some of it is dependent on the personalities of the people involved.

00:06:02
Speaker 2: My beloved could surprise.

00:06:04
Speaker 1: Me with any animal any day of the week and I'm gonna be excited. Yeah, the reverse could not be set. And part of that is right, Listen, I know a little bit about raccoon's kept in houses because I grew up with a mom that didn't have boundaries, which is not great, but we had a lot of inappropriate pets for a very particular stretch of my family's household time where my dad was stationed overseas. My mom was a little bit on the struggle bus in terms of her mental health. Right, And I was definitely perfectly happy as a child to be like, right on, we got weird things that live in our house because I was a child. Like when I look back, I'm like, oh, dear lord, I think you mentioned the deer. Recently, there was a deer that lived in your house. Briefly, there was somebody who was like, I need more detail about what happened with this deer. Yeah, I'm a little reluctant to talk about it, only because there are portions of our family that don't know about this. Oh dear hahah. And I don't want to get anybody upset. You don't want to get anybody in probly a deer that lived in the house. That is what I will say if you ever meet me in person, I will happily tell you the whole not for broadcasts, not for broadcast, and it doesn't have a great ending.

00:07:29
Speaker 2: I will tell you that.

00:07:30
Speaker 1: That's the other thing. It's a downer. But yeah, yeah, we had a variety of weird animals. You know, dogs and cats, but also fish and deer and perhaps briefly a raccoon. There are some secret animals that people still alive today. Would not be happy to discover had lived in their home. Listen, everybody's childhood is different. This is probably why I'm so like I love change, I'm good with whatever, because I was very used to like weird things happening in my life. In any case, I said, I would tell the story of a swearing bird, and I also have to be very careful about this one because it is not my story. It is a story of an animal trainer that I have met in my life who used to train birds, specifically to appear in a bird show, right, a very popular bird show, And they would take birds that needed to be rehomed sometimes, And in this case, they had taken in a parrot who had been owned by two people. They had had him a very long time, they were elderly, they could no longer care for him. There had been a lot of discussion back and forth of like, oh, he's a great bird, he loves people, he's very comfortable around humans, he sings like he knows songs and stuff, and he did. He was very great, and they spent a lot of time training him and prepping him. But what happens is a lot of times there are weird latent behaviors that an animal will have that when you put them in a stage scenario which has a little bit of a heightened stress, those latent behaviors will pop out unexpectedly, and they had in this case, had never come out at all. While they were doing training. This bird had been calm, cool and collected, did all of the tricks that they had been told he would do. And then when he came out for his debut and he was on stage with a little girl from the audience, he shouted expletives in that kid's face, which they had never heard him say before. And that was the end of his performing career. But he was still kept by this animal sanctuary that ran this program again. But like it happens all the time. So there's also part of me reading the Andrew Jackson bird thing that this is a bird who lived with someone who loved it for the last eight years of that person's life, right, and then that person is gone and suddenly there are three thousand people at your house. So it could have just been a latent behavior that he didn't normally do in front of people. She she was a female parrot, and that it popped out in a moment of obvious stress, right. You know, it's like a human when you hit your hand with a hammer. Even people that do not have potty mouths like me will say a swear word at that moment. Animals will do weird things when they are put in stressful situations or they don't understand something. So yeah, I'm going to give Paul grace. She may have been a really cool bird, right, and then yelled so much at the funeral that she had to be escorted. At animals, they're the best. Her person was gone and there was a giant crowd. Of course she was stressed out. Yeah, that's a lot, that's a lot, a lot. I mean anybody that has normal I'm using the word boring not to say that your pet is boring, but like expected boring typical pets like cats and dogs. When you have guests over to your house, they might act weird.

00:11:15
Speaker 2: We've all seen it.

00:11:16
Speaker 1: Right, Like you know, your cat that is super loving to you may run away when a stranger comes in the house, or they may do something. We used to have a cat that would do something very inappropriate when people came over to the house. It happens in stressful situations for animals.

00:11:32
Speaker 2: So justice for Paul, I don't know.

00:11:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, African gray parrots also are incredibly smart. Yeah, do form very strong attachments to people and live a long time, have very long memories to go with their long lives, like they will. There's no telling what that bird had experienced even before it lived in the Jackson household. So yeah, they're very beautiful. Can be mean like any other animal can Some of them have personalities that are not cozy anyway. Yeah, everyone needs to make provisions for what happens to their pets after they die. Yes, but those parrots extra so because yeah, it's likely that they will outlive a lot of people.

00:12:22
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that's a thing that.

00:12:27
Speaker 1: Normally, if you are getting birds from a reputable place, they will be very clear about like, the life expectancy of this bird is longer than yours, probably depending on you know where you are in your life when you get it, and like theoretically you will be coached through that at the time you acquire that bird. But it is it's a tricky thing. I think no matter where you are in your life, if you have animals, I hope you have a plan in place for if something happens to you. Even if it's like a handshake agreement. We have one with our pets that are each of us would take the other's animals if something happened, And that's in part because we do know each other's animals so well, we know they are healthcare, the genes there, and also just because we would like to know they're with somebody that we know that would love them. Yeah, will Yeah, Yeah. We don't have anything written down. We probably should, but everybody in our social circle knows that's the plan. So you know, got to make it. You got to make allowances for your bibis. I think about it all the time because three of ours that we've gotten this year, and I've told the story a couple of times, came from one home that could no longer care for them. And part of the reason we took all three was because I was like, if those were my pets, I would want them kept together and to know that they had that continuity in their lives to reduce distress. And also they're all just great cats. So like we kind of won the jackpot there. But you know, you got to think about these things when you adopt animals. That's a long term commitment that may be longer term than your life, unfortunately, so you gotta be ready for the babies. We talked about cranberries this week, we did. I have many cranberry thoughts. Yeah one, We're just gonna take it head on. The arguments over food, it I hate them. Yeah, I find it really frustrating. There was I think you were not working in our office when somebody was working on a podcast that was going to be about food debates, and everybody started emailing around like this food is better, this food should not exist, blah blah blah blah blah. And I literally got so frustrated by the email chain that was coming to me over and over that I stood up from my desk and yelled, can we stop arguing about food? Except there were expletives involved? Like I just I hate it so much. Let people eat what they want to eat. So I think, like, something that I think is fine is when there are regional or cultural ways of making food to say, like, for example, in Lexington's style barbecue in North Carolina, there is a slaw that is served with it called red Slaw. Red slaw is not for everybody, right, but I love it and I love having Lexington style barbecue with that red slaw. That's all great to me. I'm telling people the nuances of different kind like different cultural, regionally specific, ethnically specific, whatever, types of food all great. But when we get into the realm of people being outraged that someone else who has nothing to do with them put some ingredient into their potato salad, I'm like, can we not If you don't want that in your potato salad, don't put it in there, And if you don't like that person's potato salad, don't eat it. But we don't need to go on a gigantic diatribe and bring out pitchforks about the potato salad ingredients. Y yeah, I mean this is my thing. Like, I'm not saying everybody should be cool with every food, because obviously you have taste and preferences. I don't like everything on the planet. But I don't think people realize how denigrating it is to bark at other people about the way they eat and their preferences, because you wouldn't want somebody to come at you about the way you eat prison.

00:16:37
Speaker 2: I know people don't like.

00:16:40
Speaker 1: Can jellied cranberry sauce, but I'm here to say it has its place. Yeah, one's what I grew up on, which cracks me up. And I don't understand this particular thing because my mom was to make everything from scratch, mom uh huh.

00:16:55
Speaker 2: But for some reason that.

00:16:56
Speaker 1: Never applied to cranberry sauce. Yeah, and I don't know what that was about. Cranberry jelly and cranberry sauce is very appealing to kids, okay, because it is high sugar.

00:17:06
Speaker 2: Usually it's jelly, you know what I mean.

00:17:08
Speaker 1: Like, yeah, I'm laughing because when I was a kid, at my grandmother's Thanksgiving, like that that was on the table, and as a kid, I never tried it because I did not like the look of it. Yeah, I was like that looks wrong to me. No, So I was an adult before I ever had any kind of like cranberry salad at Thanksgiving. And then it was like a homemade salad made from scratch.

00:17:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know, both are good.

00:17:35
Speaker 1: I mean I like the homemade kind because again, it is so easy and you can doctor it up and do your own thing with it. And like, yeah, if you have never made cranberry sauce and you like to try things in the kitchen, I highly recommend because it couldn't be easier. It's literally throw some cranberries a in a saucepan with sugar. Yeah, but that stuff simmer. You might add a tiny amount of water just so that the before the cranberry start popping, the sugar doesn't score. But then you just let it go. But then you can add stuff. Add a little vanilla. Some people add orange. Yeah, you can add You can do anything you want with that. You can add a little bit of rum to it and make it a whole other flavor and it's delicious. One of our farmers at our farmers market this year had cranberries for a couple of weeks and Patrick bots them and I was like, what are you gonna do with those cranberries?

00:18:21
Speaker 2: And he was like, I don't know.

00:18:24
Speaker 1: And what he did do was he made a jam out of them and it was so good. Oh, I will tell you what I'm about to do with cranberries here in a minute, because I feel so almost like foolish about the way our Thanksgiving went down this year in a good way that I feel like I need to confess it to everybody what a ding dong I am. At all points in time, we often. First of all, Brian and I pared down Thanksgiving. We have Thanksgiving with just the two of us. Yeah, we are on the go so much that there are very few days that are holidays where it's like, you know what, what if you and I just hang out together and we eat a feast and we build lego and watched Star Wars things on TV and I, you know, make a cocktail and it's wonderful. And so Thanksgiving has become one of those. And sometimes I cook, but a lot of times I will just order a feast from a restaurant if one of the restaurants near us that we like has one. I messed up that order this year in a comedic way because the restaurant that I have ordered from many times in the past changed their copy on their website about what was included, and it seemed like a pared down version of the feast, Like it seemed like your turkey you're stuffing. You had options on some of the sides, but like it didn't mention cranberry sauce and it didn't mention desserts. Okay, And first of all, I ordered an unconscionable amount of food for like eight people. Yeah, thinking like, we're going to eat off of this for four days and it's gonna be magic, because we know I love my leftovers. But then I went to pick it up and there was so much more things. They handed us a big thing of cranberry sauce, which is their home, and then like this entire tray of pecan and pumpkin custard tartlets, and I was like, oh goodness. And I said, uh oh, because I had already purchased fresh cranberries to make my own sauce and ingredients to make pies. And I was like, well, now I have a lot of cranberries on hands. So what I am doing, yeah, is making cranberry liqueur, yeah, which is super easy. Look up a recipe on line. But basically, to make a liqueur, you just take a neutral spirit like a vodka. You can also use gin, you can use really any spirit you want. Crush them up, let them soak in that spirit for anywhere between three days to three weeks. There are cool things you can purchase online if people do. If people make homebrew, they probably have them that can you can test the ABV of a thing, m M. It's super easy and like that's a good way to know when the alcohol by volume has dropped a little bit because the fruit juices have gotten involved in like the proportions are different. And then you can sweeten it if you want, or you can make it super dry and leave all the sugar out. But then you have this great liqueur once you strain off the berries that you can put into Margarita's, a Collin's, like whatever you want, and it's just delicious. Patrick also likes to make shrubs. Yeah, if listeners don't know, shrubs are a thing that you can put into a cocktail or another drink, or you can just sip it or have it in sparkling water, made with some kind of fruit and sugar and vinegar. And He's made a ton of different shrubs. And he tried to make a cranberry shrub one time, and he had never really worked with cranberries for that purpose before, and it like it didn't work out.

00:21:44
Speaker 2: And I think a.

00:21:46
Speaker 1: Different series of steps probably would have made something delicious. Yeah, yeah, those are almost you know, listen, Experimenting is my favorite. But I always know that when I'm making an experiment, I have to be ready for it to not go the way I want but that's always a learning experience. This is why it's good to notate I'm bad about taking notes as I go, but that makes a big difference. The title page thing was a hoot for me in that one book about reading Cranberry's because, as I have mentioned before, I used to work as a cataloging assistant in a library for like a decade plus, and you know, our joke was always, you can't judge a book by its cover, but you can't judge it by its title page. But the thing was, like, normally I have seen a lot of books that have what you might call to title pages, but one is usually like an illustrated kind of splashy graphic one that doesn't have much information, and then the other one is the true title page with like the publisher, the data publication, et cetera. Yeah, that book has the splashy graphic page, but it still has all of that other information on it, which is why it's been so confusing for catalogers. I think over the years. It's just a weird thing.

00:23:06
Speaker 2: I said.

00:23:06
Speaker 1: We would talk briefly about Cranberry's use for utish, at least I don't know if I said it during recording. I know I said it to you, but I think you said it just to me because the thing is right, Like, that's a very common thing. We have all been told since youth that if you have a urinary tract infection, drink cranberry juice. That's actually not a great treatment, but it is a great preventative apparently, Like there was a lot of research done I feel like in the late nineties and early to twenties, two thousands, I don't know what to call them that suggested that like because of what, because of the acidity of it, Like the bacteria that causes those problems cannot lodge onto the wall of your urinary tract right and cause that, but you can't like wash it off with crabber right after the fact. Yeah, it will help support your recovery in terms of not allowing it to get worse potentially, but just know, and also helping you to stay hydrated and drink a lot of fluid, which also helps. But just like I feel like it gets a little confused where people think, like that's the treatment and you should be doing another treatment perhaps, Yeah, and that can be a supportive aspect if you already have it, but Yeah, there are also supplements made from cranberries. Yeah, and I don't know how much research it is there is into like whether that active ingredient is helpful in the same regard. But I personally have taken it, taken those supplements when I have felt like I am going to be at more risk of urinary tract infection, like if I'm going to be traveling a long time and I'm not necessarily going to be able to stay hydrated or have access to bathrooms or whatever, like those are when you're on a bus in Morocco, you're scared to drink water because you don't know when you will hit a bathroom. What's funny is I didn't do this in Morocco at all. I did I like with SpongeBob above water, I didn't drink a thing on those bus trips. Oh yeah, I didn't drink on the bus trips. But I also was not taking cranberry supplements on the bus. But like when you and I have gone on tour in the past, and like our schedules have been really irregular and a lot of time in airports and on airplanes and in transit, like sometimes I have done that with the hope of helping prevent a UTI. If I get a UTI, I call the doctor.

00:25:38
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.

00:25:39
Speaker 1: I also wanted to finish this by issuing a personal plea to Disney. Okay, Disney, here my plea.

00:25:48
Speaker 2: Listen.

00:25:49
Speaker 1: This is the thing that I do at home, but it's not feasible for everybody to do because I have because I'm a ridiculous person in industrial soft serve machine. You do have, so I can make my own doll whip here at home, but not everybody can. But let me tell you, the best move you can make post holiday is to put your leftover cranberry sauce on top of pineapple dull whip.

00:26:15
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:26:15
Speaker 1: It is one of the best things I have ever eaten in my life. It was one of the smartest uses of leftover cranberry sauce I have ever come up with. And I really wish Disney would just offer this as a holiday snack item.

00:26:27
Speaker 2: Because that is so fun. It's so good.

00:26:31
Speaker 1: It's so good like the tartness of cranberry with that slight tartness that pineapple can sometimes have somehow does not compound into hyper tartness. It becomes really delicious together lovely and because it's like, you know, sweet and a little bit creamy and cold. It's like a whole other It's so good. It's so good. Disney, please do this because I don't always want to make a big batch of dull whip at Yeah, because sometimes to do those machines, you got to make a certain amount and it's a pain in that it took us to clean that thing. And I don't always want to be like Brian, do we have room in the freezer for a gallon and a half of saft serve that. I'm not going to eat one cup of dollwhip today. Sometimes it's happened, but I really really listen Disney as the purveyor of dolwhip to many people. Please put cranberry sauce on it.

00:27:29
Speaker 2: That's all.

00:27:30
Speaker 1: It's all a masking. It's all the masking. I don't need credit. I just need to be able to get it.

00:27:37
Speaker 2: My holiday plea for the year. I hope.

00:27:40
Speaker 1: If this is your weekend coming up, maybe you have some doll whip if you're somewhere you could get it. You could go to Hawaii put some cranberry sauce on that, or you can go to Disney World I feel like there's some other place in the US that has started selling dole whip, and I don't remember where it is, but other than you know, my house, there's the n ice cream shop near my house that over the summer had what they were at least saying was dull whip.

00:28:06
Speaker 2: It tasted like dull whip to me.

00:28:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, you can buy the mix for dolwhip. You just have to have a machine to make it do, like if you have your own, like home soft served machine, because they do make smaller ones for home use, like consumer ones. Mine is ridiculous and huge because I'm a ding dong. I don't know why as I've gotten older my hobby has become service industry, but there you go. But they do make smaller ones and you can buy like the powdered mix that they use to make dole whip, and it works great. So if you have a smaller one and you can do that, great if you don't have a machine and don't want to get into that whole business. Disney should be meeting this need. The other great thing to do with leftover cranberry sauce if you have it and it works for either the jellied kind or the homemade kind, although they're gonna do different things if you use that instead of simple syrup in an old fashioned it's very delicious.

00:29:06
Speaker 2: That sounds really good. The face you just made made me so happy.

00:29:09
Speaker 1: Like you can literally, if it's the jellied cranberry sauce and you don't particularly love it to eat, you might be surprised at.

00:29:15
Speaker 2: How well it will blit.

00:29:16
Speaker 1: Like you literally just get a scoop of a little barspoon scoop of it, put it in your glass, muddle it with some mangaster bitters, and then put your your bourbon of choice on top. Give it a really good, so delicious same thing. You can do it with the homemade stuff, but it will have the little bits in it. Yeah, but you can also use that stuff to make like custom sodas.

00:29:37
Speaker 2: You can just.

00:29:38
Speaker 1: Embrace the cranberry sauce in whatever form it comes to you. If you don't like one or the other and you somehow get it or have it, like you know you're visiting someone and that's what they have, there are ways you can use it that I bet might delight you. Yeah, I'm all about you know, kitchen and bar creativity. So let's let's all embrace all the things and don't dog anybody for what they want. The other thing I wanted to say about homemade versus canned cranberry sauce. Not everybody has the means to cook for whatever reason. Yeah, whether they are physically unable to, whether they just don't have access to a kitchen. That's you know, a Thanksgiving meal is a lot to cook, even if you're just reheating it. Like, just don't dog people for their choices. That's my Please be kind As we head into this weekend and we are in the midst of the holidays. I know it's easy for everybody to get tired and frustrated because everywhere is busy, there's nowhere to park, and you're tired and cold.

00:30:36
Speaker 2: But I hope we.

00:30:37
Speaker 1: Can all still muster the kindness to treat each other with respect and dignity and care, and that everybody is cool to you in return, because we should all be. We will be right back here tomorrow with a classic episode, and then on Monday we will have something brand new. Stop you miss in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio, app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.