Transcript of AE 1042 - The Goss: Swarm of Bees Massacres 63 Endangered Penguins

G'day, you mob. Pete here, and this is another episode of Aussie English, the number one place for anyone and everyone wanting to learn Australian English. So, today I have a Goss' episode for you where I sit down with my old man, my father, Ian Smissen, and we talk about the week's news whether locally down under here in Australia or non-locally overseas in other parts of the world.

Okay, and we sometimes also talk about whatever comes to mind, right. If we can think of something interesting to share with you guys related to us or Australia, we also talk about that in The Goss'. So, these episodes are specifically designed to try and give you content about many different topics where we're obviously speaking in English and there are multiple people having a natural and spontaneous conversation in English.

So, it is particularly good to improve your listening skills. In order to complement that, though, I really recommend that you join the podcast membership or the academy membership at AussieEnglish.com.au, where you will get access to the full transcripts of these episodes, the PDFs, the downloads, and you can also use the online PDF reader to read and listen at the same time.

Okay, so if you really, really want to improve your listening skills fast, get the transcript, listen and read at the same time, keep practising, and that is the quickest way to level up your English. Anyway, I've been rabbiting on a bit, I've been talking a bit. Let's just get into this episode, guys. Smack the bird and let's get into it.

So, dad, what's going on?

Good.

So, you're allergic to bees?

I am, yes.

Apparently, 63...

Not as allergic as African penguins, though.

I shouldn't be laughing. Yeah. So, this is a story from ABC, again, go check out ABC.com- .net.au, sorry. ABC.net.au. Swarm of bees kills dozens of endangered penguins on a South African beach. So, a swarm of bees killed 63 endangered African penguins on a beach outside of Cape Town, the South African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds. SANCCOB with a double "C" has said...

Yeah, I know it's like, come on, guys, you could come up with a better, quicker acronym. That's like, what, eight, nine words?

Well, the irony is that the "F" in there doesn't exist, it's not in the acronym. (both talking) There is no "N".

Yeah, yeah. Well, I guess they've taken away foundation, right? Just to make it work.

I know it's a weird one.

So, after tests, we found bee stings around the penguins' eyes. The Foundation's David Roberts, a clinical veterinarian, said, this is a very rare occurrence. We don't expect it to happen, often it's a fluke. There was also dead bees on the scene. Would you believe it? So, the penguins put up a fight.

Well, not necessarily.

Yeah, that's it, right. Yeah. So, anyway, it turns out these African penguins are really, really endangered. They obviously come to Cape Town or they, I don't know if they come there, or if they live there permanently...?

They do. Yeah, there's a couple of beaches around the Cape that these birds hang out on, much like the little penguins do around the coast of southern Australia, the African penguins around the coast of southern- South Africa...

They're very cute little birds. They're the ones with these little pink kind of like, they almost look like a beanie that comes over the top of its eyes.

...Face patches. Yeah, they are very cute.

I know they look gorgeous. So, yeah, I guess these guys were effectively being monitored by SANCCOB, and they arrived on the beach and found obviously a shitload of them were dead and they would have been like, what the hell? So, they've taken away a lot of these animals and had them get post-mortems by vets, and they found that these animals were all, you know, healthy with no external or physical injuries.

But then they discovered all these multiple bee stings in the animals. And I think what's happened is that the bee stings are from a naturally occurring honeybee there, the Cape Honey Bee, which is believed to be the one that was responsible. They're native to the environment as well.

Obviously, something stirred up the bees, and the biology of the birds is what's really led to their downfall here, where they pair up, obviously, they pair bond and then they'll lay- The female will lay eggs on a nest, and one of the animals has to be there at all times whilst the other animal is out at sea fishing, filling up its crop with fish to come back and feed both the other parent and the chicks that are there on the nest.

That's their sort of way of reproducing...

Typical penguin, you know, it is a variation of a typical penguin theme. Yeah.

Yeah, where one individual stays with the nest, the other one goes out. And then obviously whilst one- The individual I would imagine when they got to the beach, the 63 penguins that were dead were probably all the birds that were sitting on nests for prolonged periods of time, and something... And wouldn't move. Yeah. And somethings egged on these...

If you'll excuse the pun.

Yeah. So, many of these puns coming out, that wasn't even intentional. So, something's obviously...

To be or not to be.

...And the annoying thing with bees, I think, is especially bees that die once they have stung is that they tend to send out pheromones once they have started to attack something...

So, the others...

...Just signal to all the others to do the same thing, and you end up with a swarm and they'll just attack anything in the vicinity. And so, these bees have obviously attacked these poor penguins that would have been sitting there like, fuck off. Just leave me alone, I'm not a threat. I don't eat bees. And they would have been, you know, sitting on their nests and all stung to death tragically.

So, yeah, it's a bit of a bugger, but it was an interesting story, and they were thinking, I think they were saying that numbers of penguins are dwindling and may- The species may become extinct by the year 2035 if nothing else is done. So, it kind of made me think about the penguins in the movie oddball. You know, the fairy penguins on the Middle Island, is it?

Middle Island down in Warrnambool, yeah.

Where in the movie they're like, we've got to stay above 10 or they're going to cancel the funding to take care of these penguins and, you know, they get down to 11 or whatever it is.

Dogs will be out there going, no bloody penguins here.

Maybe that's what they need. They need some Maremma dogs to sit on the beach here in South Africa and fend off the bees. Maybe they should be the target for the bees.

Yeah. Well, that's an interesting one. Because, you know, no explanation, and you'll never come up with an explanation for how it happened or...

Well, arrived on the scene after the fact. Right. So, you got no idea.

Exactly. And potentially no solution, because if you can't explain how or why it happened.

Well, it was crazy. We went to the kids park the other day and Noah's playing and I'm like, there's all these fucking wasps just flying past my face constantly, like, what? And they're all going in the same direction. And then I noticed that they dug a nest in the tan bark, which is what they put on the bottom of playgrounds so that if kids fall, obviously it's somewhat softer than, you know, concrete.

Yeah.

But these wasps had dug a nest, and I've been watching a channel, there's a channel on YouTube that I've gone down the rabbit hole of watching a lot since I was doing my PhD...

Uh oh.

...And it's called Mousetrap Monday. And effectively this guy gets sent mousetraps from all over the world...

And he tests them.

...And he tests them on mouse- Mice that he has in his shed, you know, and he'll- He's branched out now. He's obviously realised... (both talking) ...killing wasps. Yeah, into killing, I think they're called- Are they called leather jackets or Yellow Jackets?

Yellow Jackets.

Yellow Jackets in the US.

Yeah, we call them European wasps in Australia.

Are they European?

Yeah.

Yeah. I never know with these names...

...Northern hemisphere, and the assumption is that they came here from Europe.

Yeah. So, we have them in Australia, but...

Only for about the last 30 years.

Yeah. So, this guy on this channel Mousetrap Monday, he uses all these different methods of trying to clear these wasps out of, you know, his garden or his friend's gardens or their farms. And he's done a few where he pours like liquid nitrogen down into the nest or, you know, molten aluminium...

That'll fix it.

Yeah, there's all these things and he's like, well, that one worked well. And you're like, no shit, Sherlock...

Insecticide tends to work.

...Liquid Nitrogen- Yeah, but no one's going to watch that, dad.

I know, they can do that themselves.

I used an actual- Well, I think he does do a few actually using proper products that have been made, but then he's obviously branched off into, hey, I happen to have a bunch of liquid nitrogen and a wasp nest.

What a coincidence.

So, but I was watching that, and he fully suits up, you know, he gets into a bee suit or what I imagine is a bee suit.

A bee suit, to look like a bee.

Well, no, it's a suit to protect him from the bees, right, dad.

Yeah.

You got this. You've seen one before.

I have.

And he- The wasps, obviously for pretty obvious reasons, go ballistic, they go berserk when he's trying to exterminate them.

What a surprise. Well, that's the other thing is that- And I've killed a couple of wasp nests myself. But you do it at night when they're not active.

Yeah, compared to bees.

You can't video it, you know. He wants the thing to look exciting.

Yeah. And- I've forgotten where the tangent- Oh, so we're at the park and I see this thing there, and I'm just like, holy shit, like this- Someone needs to do something about this. We have to call the council because- And Kel was like, why? What do you mean? What's the problem? And I'm like, man, all Noah has to do is go over there and piss them off somehow, you know, just walk past...

Thousands of them out there.

...And they'll kill him, you know, like, yeah, he could die. A baby could die. Someone, you know, there's hundreds of them, if not thousands of them in the ground there, you know, I'm terrified enough. And Noah's just running around like la la la... Jesus. And so...

Noah's a little bit young, but your average five-year-old is going to get a stick and poke it in there...

I remember I was definitely in that camp when we were younger, living in the mountains. What did I do? I remember we had a jumping jack nest in the front yard. Do you remember that?

Yeah.

I got done. I was- Jumping jacks in Australia... Yeah. Jumping jacks in Australia are these little ants that are kind of like a dark, glossy navy-blue colour...

Dark indigo colour...

...And they have these pincers that are like fluoro red or fluoro orange. And you know that they're jumping jacks because one, they can jump, which is fucking terrifying if you don't like stinging ants. Normally, ants are pretty good because you're like, okay, there it is. It's not a problem.

But these ones can jump, and they jump at you. And but they also have antenna that kind of flick constantly, like they kind of look like a wasp, right? That's like really irritated. And I remember we had these in the front yard, and I thought it'd be a great idea to get the hose and shove it down the ant nest.

Not a great idea.

Especially when I turned it on and then they all ended up on me. And I remember my foot swelled up so much I couldn't put my shoe on after that. So, that was a lesson well learnt. I didn't do that afterwards.

And the key is probably never do it again. Because you will have developed an allergic reaction to them now.

Yeah, who knows. It is funny, though, because you look back and I'm like, I remember being that young and thinking, man, this seems like a pisser of an idea. This would be hilarious, you know, like, what are they going to do? Water is going to go into their nest at a high velocity, they're going to shit themselves. And you don't realise they're gonna come after the person who is attacking them.

And it's so funny as an adult, you're like, clearly, that is really, really dumb. But as a child you're like, this is going to be great fun.

...Parenting and teaching, I was a high school teacher for 10 years. Ian's parenting rule- There is only one rule for parenting and teaching, and that is children are fucking idiots. After everything else that explains everything.

You don't know, you've got to give them a bit of leeway, right? You just don't know what's going to happen. These things, you have no idea...

It just means you have to entirely manage their risk until they are capable of managing it themselves.

I think that's what makes taking care of my kids, Noah, especially obviously at the moment, is just that you just don't know what he's going to do. You're like...

No, you have no idea.

...I look at this room and I see an incredibly safe room. And he probably sees, you know, a room and doesn't see danger or safety...

No, he just sees a thousand things to play with.

...But he'll find a way of doing some dumb shit. Like the other day...

What happens if I climb the bookcase?

Well, he was smashing one of the cars into the wall, and I'm like, mate, you're going to push the car through the plaster in the wall. And it's like...

Really!?

Yeah, I know. But it's one of those things you'd be like, why would he know that? He's got to do it once to realise that's the cause and effect...

Yep. That's my point is that children are idiots. And, you know, you just have to manage their risk profile until they get sensible enough to do it themselves.

But that is the most tiring thing. It's just that constantly needing someone to supervise, you don't necessarily have to be...

Teacher in a science lab...

Oh, man.

...With 25 fourteen-year-olds.

The Bunsen burners.

Exactly.

Bring it on. What you meant- You mean we get to burn stuff and see the colours change and everything. What happens when I do, you know, my blazer?

...See what happens.

All right. All right. That's probably enough for this episode. See you in the next one, guys. I hope you enjoyed it.

Alrighty, you mob. Thank you so much for listening to or watching this episode of The Goss'. If you would like to watch the video if you're currently listening to it and not watching it, you can do so on the Aussie English Channel on YouTube. You'll be able to subscribe to that, just search "Aussie English" on YouTube.

And if you're watching this and not listening to it, you can check this episode out also on the Aussie English podcast, which you can find via my free Aussie English podcast application on both Android and iPhone. You can download that for free, or you can find it via any other good podcast app that you've got on your phone. Spotify, podcast from iTunes, Stitcher, whatever it is.

I'm your host, Pete. Thank you so much for joining me. I hope you have a ripper of a day, and I will see you next time. Peace!