Dirty Jobs

Mike is at the East Bay Vivarium and introduces clips with a water monitor names Taz. Taz is from southeast Asia, is over seven feet long, weighs about 100 pounds and has a forked tongue. The first clips come from the Alligator Farmer episode (#2.15) filmed in Cutoff, LA.

There are more alligators (70,000) than people in Cutoff. Mike met Gerry who runs an alligator farm. He makes Mike get into a pen and grab the baby alligators to move them to a new pen. They also need to check if the alligators are male or female by sticking a finger up their rectum. Mike learns not to hesitate when catching the alligators or else they'll bite. He mentions that since this segment aired, many people have asked him what it's like to put his finger up an alligator's bottom. He claims to ignore the question and refer them to the video.

Next Mike introduces us to a two week old African tortoise and a much larger ten year old tortoise named Kitty. Tortoises can be bought at East Bay for $500 which is a good deal since they live for over one hundred years. The next clips come from the Penguin Keeper episode (#2.34) where Mike works with people who dig for bloodworms on the coast of Maine.

The bloodworm's skin is translucent giving them a creamy pink color, hence the name bloodworm. They have four black teeth and their bite feels just like a bee sting. We meet Rob who shows Mike how to dig for the bloodworms and how to tell them from sand worms. Field producer Dave Barsky fell over into the mud and pulls Mike down with him.

One of the diggers, Claudia, is allergic to the bite of a bloodworm and has to be taken to the hospital when she's bitten, but she still does this job. When counting their worms at the end of the day, Claudia has 150. The others have 125 and 175 worms. Mike has only 19 worms. Mike wants to see someone get bit and puts a bunch of worms on his arm. Finally Mike gets what he asked for. Ouch.

Then Mike shows us a bearded dragon and some clips from the Bug Breeder episode (#2.37) when he traveled to New Orleans, LA and discovered the Insect Express. That's the name of the van used by the Audubon Insectarium which breeds rare and exotic insect species for exhibits worldwide. We meet Jayme and Cokie at the insect rearing facility.

Mike is shown leaf cutter ants in their manmade ant farm. Mike gets to clean their "dump" which is on the perimeter of the ant farm. The dump consists of feces, urine and dead ants. The older ants end up working at the dump since they're already at the end of their lives anyway. Younger ants are scouts who leave a pheremone trail showing where the food is located. These ants live about three months.

The queen can live for twenty years in captivity and constantly puts out eggs. She has sex one time and stores the sperm for the rest of her life. The males die immediately after mating. All of the workers in the colony are females. Soldier ants are much larger and have serrated jaws that can cut shoe leather. The soldier ants protect the foragers that are collecting leaves and cannot defend themselves.

Mike is then shown white eyed assassin bugs. They have fake white spots on their backs that look like eyes which scare predators. They wait for prey to go by and will jump on the it. They then inject their prey with their beak which releases digestive enzymes so they can suck up the insides. Mike gets to feed crickets to the assassin bugs.

Then Mike is shown predatious diving beetles normally found in the Louisiana swamp. He feeds crickets to the beetles also. However, this time he is instructed to take a fistful, squish the crickets and put his hand into the water and release them. A feeding frenzy ensues. Mike says that since this segment aired, so many people asked about the crickets, that the Audubon Insectarium now has crushing and feeding as a daily attraction. They also plan on adding exhibits of a scorpion tank and mosquitoes feeding on an artificial leg.

Mike's next animal to show us is Java, a pixie bullfrog. His next clips are from episode #2.23 Skull Cleaner filmed at Skulls Unlimited in Oklahoma City. Jay's company processes more animal skulls and full skeletons than anywhere else in the world. They boil larger skulls to remove the tissue. Today, inside a cauldron they are boiling bison skulls and an entire horse skeleton. There are maggots floating on top. Oils come out of the meat and bone and float to the surface. Jay says the water was clean the day before. It's a disgusting brown now and Mike says it smells terrible. They lift the hot skulls out of the boiling water.

They handpick as much meat as they can off the bone then leave the rest of it for their beetles. Once the skulls dry for 24-48 hours, they put them in a tank with domestic carrion beetles. The beetles strip the flesh down to the bone more effectively than any tool. They breed their beetles right there and have millions of them. The beetles can strip a skull clean in about 48 hours. They'll eat anything put in the tank.

Mike thought the hot cauldron smelled bad, but that was before he was shown a container where they rot the meat off a skeleton in water. This process is called maceration. Jay says this is the worst stink his company produces. Today they're basically marinating a rat underwater and letting it rot. After dumping out the stinky water, Mike needs to reach in and scoop out the rest of the bones. He would rather just give the container one last shake. The stink is so fine that it pierces the gloves. Jay says Mike will smell the maceration on his hands for at least two days.

Next comes some viewer mail. Dirty Sal writes that she likes seeing Mike getting bit by snakes (a lot), so we are treated to clips of Mike getting bit by snakes while working with Kristen the Snake Lady from episode #2.33 Snake Researcher. Lake Erie water snakes are a protected species in Ohio. Mike feels like an unprotected species doing this job. He was bitten by them repeatedly in this segment.

Kristen explains that water snakes don't have fangs. These snakes just have rows of small teeth. Mike insists that they're fangs. However, fangs are hollow and are used to inject venom so they are only found on poisonous snakes. Mike should be happy that these snakes did not have fangs - or else he'd probably be dead.

Mike was then taken to Kristen's lab where they force the snakes to regurgitate so they can record what the snakes have eaten. We get to see the half eaten remnants of a mud puppy vomited up by one of the snakes. And not only is Mike bleeding from his bites, but he gets covered in snake pee and poo as well. Yuk.

Finally, Mike shows us a Chinese box turtle eating a mealworm. He shows clips of harvesting and cooking geoducks from the Geoduck Farmer episode (#2.24). Basically a geoduck (pronounced gooey duck) is a giant clam buried in the sand that can live over 150 years. Mike visited the Taylor Shellfish Hatchery outside of Seattle, Washington. He tells us that these animals are not gooey and they are not ducks. Their name came from a Native American tribe in western Washington state. It's a phonetic translation of "dig deep".

Mike is shown how to spawn the geoducks at the hatchery. All they need is warm water and algae. The males can ejaculate for up to 10-15 minutes at a time. Females can put out up to ten million eggs in fifteen minutes. One male can fertilize 5,000 females - that's 1.5 billion eggs in one session.

Once the geoducks are conceived in the tanks, they are raised to adulthood in the tidelands Puget Sound. Mike shown how to harvest the geoducks. Taylor Shellfish raises 800 thousand pounds of geoducks each year. They're starting a dive program so they can harvest whether the tide is in or out. Mike is told to not break the shell as he's digging them out of the sand. It will kill the geoduck and take $24 out of his paycheck.

Mike's last stop of the day is at Xinh's restaurant to learn how to properly cook a geoduck. The top part becomes sashimi (sushi) and the bottom part is either sauteed or breaded and pan fried. Xinh throws the whole geoduck in a pan of hot water for six seconds. Then she peels the skin off. Honestly these things look just like a human penis and Mike is not comfortable cutting them up. He slices it into thin strips and eats some. Xinh's recipe is pretty good. Mike ends the show as himself being an exhibit (Dirtius Hosticus) in the East Bay Vivarium with Taz the water monitor.