Well, hello, Kevin. How are you today? I'm doing pretty good, man.
How about you?
So I have heard that you need some help with Christmas, and I'm here as your personal liaison to aiming in the right direction, sir. Dude, thank you for having such a hard time with Christmas. It's simple. Go to Bluechron Aquatics.com and pick out shrimp for your whole family. Color, pattern, size. Free shipping with promo code. Aquarium Guide, guys. What do you mean, shrimp? We had a script, bro.
Come on.
Okay, fine. Shrimp. That's great. Yeah, shrimp.
Free shrimp.
An aquarium. Guys. Podcast. Damn it. Now I'm off the script. Bluecrown Aquatics.com Promo code aquarium guys for free shipping. That is a $45 value. You don't even need to ask what you want for Christmas. Everybody wants shrimp. You want shrimp, don't you? I mean, they are delicious.
Oh, boy.
Now you're going to eat them. These are decorative ornamental shrimp. Robbie is going to be mad at you. Mad? I wouldn't want one more Robbie be mad at me. No. So we can't forget about our charity of choice, either. Ohio Fish Rescue. I'm from Ohio. Who are you, and how did you get into my podcast? Well, is your name actually Kevin? Stick to the script. Yeah, from Ohio. how's the Cleveland Browns doing? They're doing great. All right. I'm done with the script. Ohiofishrescues.com, go to their website, show them some love, buy a T shirt, donate some money, or give them a call and tell Rich you love them. Their entire charity is based behind saving fish that need a better home. That's probably a good cause. I thought so as well. Now, before we start our podcast, I do have to let you guys know this podcast is not intended for all audiences. We have censored a lot of the words that are necessary, but this podcast is not intended for children or those that do not like strong themes. This is story time. This is a prerecorded podcast with the entire group, and just wanted to give you that heads up before we start. Also, Aquarium Guyspodcast.com, go to the bottom of the website. There's a sign up sheet for plant bulbs jimmy's hosting. You're going to sign up for five packs of ten bulbs. They're going to be sent to five different people, so sign up. You just need your name, address, and phone number so we can choose a winner. We're going to choose a winner at the end of December, so get those in as soon as you can. And again, enjoy this podcast. This is one of our favorite and fun podcasts we've ever done. Thanks, guys. Welcome to the Aquarium Guys podcast with your host, Jim colby and Rob dolson.
Hey, everybody. how's it going out there today? We are live from studio Be here in Perhaps, Minnesota. And today we've talked about having story time.
Is story time story time?
We're just making stuff up because we don't have anybody till next week as a guest. So we are just going to tell stories about aquariums, about the pet industry, about life in general.
So we've actually been asked us more story times because we did intros and we keep having little stories along it. So we were requested to have one full thing of just random stories, some of our past experiences, mistakes and laughs. So we're doing this by popular demand. So I'm looking at you, discord. I'm looking at you collection of emails that I've been ignoring, and we're going to dive headfirst into this.
Why are you ignoring emails?
Yeah, well, you had an email that you said you were going to bring and never did, so I figured ignore them too.
Have one. You know what? I'll bring it tomorrow.
You can bring it tomorrow.
I'll bring it tomorrow. I have an email and I don't have any ink in my printer, but I'll get to print it off. If I have to write it down on a piece of paper, I'll bring it over.
Hey, all right.
Don't laugh at me. I have a pen. I know how to write.
By the time this airs, it's already going to go because this is something we're saving for, like, a rainy day.
Oh, right.
So when you're hearing this, you know that we're sipping pina coladas and something in the rain. That's more your music than mine. Yeah, right.
Drinking peanut coladas, getting caught in the rain.
Well, before we get too off far in a tangent here, we are your host. I am Rob olson.
I am Jim colby.
And I'm Adam Eldashire.
So let's just get started. Who wants to go first?
I don't want to go first.
Adam, you're going first.
Adam okay.
Yeah.
What do you got for us today, buddy?
So I don't know if I told Jim this one, but back in the day, like yesterday, late 90s, early 2000s, when you could actually get real live rock that was from the ocean because they would chip the shit off the reef. I put some live rock in one of my tanks, and then I went and I had a bunch of fish in there. And I was like, oh, yeah.
Okay.
And then I'd come back the next morning and fish would be gone. And I checked the back of the fish tank. I'd check inside the filter. I checked the bottom of the fish tank. I checked everywhere that these fish could possibly be. No dead fish, no nothing. They just disappeared.
I totally remember this. I totally remember this now. Now that you bring it up, this.
One pissed me off to no end.
Because you were checking on the floor, too, right? They jumped out and they weren't nowhere to be found.
Well, back then, I want to point out that it was so long ago. This was before the age of security cameras, so they would be on tape, and that was too much money back in the day.
Oh, God.
Yeah.
But it just would drive me insane. So I got to the point where I went and I shut all the lights off, and then I turned on a red light because I had read somewhere that and this does work for reptiles because I had some geckos. Get out. But that's another story.
Oh, God.
Oh, I could tell you stories for days.
Story time.
Yes, story time. I go and I'm putting this red light on, and this clamshell on the rock opens up slowly after, like, a half an hour of no light or.
So I want to stop you right there before you give any more details. Just to let you know, he was not on lsd. He only had a nickel bag of weed.
I didn't even have any weeds. That would have made this better.
You're telling that it just started opening?
Man, I don't know what's going on.
When he says red light, it's like I started out like a little red light district here in my aquarium. I'm hoping to see some stuff go down.
Well, if you're trying to paint a real picture, you got to imagine those old time photo roll labs where they're, like, dipping shit like pictures and stuff, and they only have the red light so it doesn't ruin the exposure. That's what I'm imagined. He's just sitting in front of aquarium with photos hanging on strings all around him, looking at a clam.
False murder.
No, I didn't do that. I put red light bulb in a what the hell? Like just a regular hand carry light.
Sounds high.
Tan light.
He took it because it wasn't his front window.
No, this is like csi.
So this clamshell started opening, and out comes this octopus. And not any octopus. It's a blue ring. Oh, that's got to get edited.
Shit.
I was thinking we said fine.
All right, all right. Keep going. Wait a minute.
Start from the top again about it opening.
This is a censored podcast. This is going to be labeled explicit for you kids.
Oh, Lord.
Warning.
So this clamshell started opening, and out popped this blue ring octopus and started wandering on my tank and eating things, like checking everything. And I went, oh, well, that tank's done.
Whoa, whoa, whoa.
Why is that tank done?
Do you know what a blue ring octopus is?
Tell the audience what a blue ring octopus is.
Go ahead, tell them, Adam.
A blue ring octopus is literally one of the most venomous animals on the planet. It bites you, you die. You have 15 minutes and you're dead. You don't even have enough time to tell people that you love them. You're just dead. And I had this in Grand rapids, Minnesota, which is the middle of nowhere.
Well, wait. And also have to point out that you've always had that trouble of telling.
People that you love you love them.
You won't even tell me you love them. So 15 minutes is way past the point that you're comfortable with telling someone.
Here's my thought. Rather than tell your loved ones that you love them, how about you tell the paramedic to get you the heck to the hospital to get dumb dumb.
Where would they fall off?
They didn't know what the heck they had to deal with. So then I had to call Jim the next day which was holy, tell him.
And I laughed.
Yeah, he laughed at me a lot. And he goes, well your take is.
Ft. And then well hold on guys, hold on. Tea time. Explain this to me. People pay tons of money for blue ring octopus.
Blue rings are cheap.
You didn't really just put two and two together and be like, all right, I own a pet store. I'm going to sell it.
He had to. Somebody gave it to his ex wife for a Christmas present.
Liability.
Exactly.
All right.
There's that note.
Do not send that to any ex.
Wives or ex husbands.
You think the csi crime investigation will get your hair note? They'll just be like the one dude that sells blue octopus. Let me see where it goes.
Narrowed down in a city of 5000 people. Yeah. where's the one pet store?
So what did you do?
So I basically took a gallon of bleach, took the carbon out and since there was hardly any fish in there anyways, just dump the whole gallon of bleach in the fish tank and let it die.
Wait a second because I just realized my phone's ringing right now. Oh my God. It's Peter. 14 episodes in and now we're called by peta. Thanks Adam.
Peta can kiss my ass.
Wow. We have lots of things to do today.
All right, I'm going to reel this back in. I have a similar story that's not quite as bad. So let's start with the first one, right? I have a customer that has quite a large aquarium somewhere around like a 90 gallon long, right. And she's very adamant. Her fish are her babies. She's like one of those that could easily have a toy dog in a bag and abuse it all the time. So she treats her fish the same way where her husband just gets told off, her kids get told off. But her fish is her thing. It's her life and she's not very skilled at it but she's pretty decent. She knows how to take care of them.
There's a lot of mothers out there who aren't very skilled at taking care of children.
Is that the truth? So she calls me up and said my fish are disappearing. I don't see anything. I can't see any carcasses. I'm like, ma'am, you have a 90 gallon aquarium. If something craps you're never going to find it. It's just going to dissolve and other fish are going to pick out and eat it and you're not going to see it in that aquarium because it's very dense. She's like, no, you don't understand. I lost half of my fish. No disease, no ick, no nothing. I'm like, all right, let me come over. I couldn't find a scrap of anything. The filters were clean. Nothing. It's like they just disappeared. She has tile all around with no other objects. She doesn't have cats in the house, so if they jumped out for some reason and plus, she had a lid that was sealed on the edges. We had extra clips because she had hatchet fish and hatchet fisher known to jump out of the tank for those are listed.
Very jumpy.
Yeah.
Half of her fish were gone. We bought new fish, acclimated them in, and they kept disappearing randomly. But it was all at once. It wasn't like they just kept disappearing one another. Just boom, they're gone overnight.
So was it a kidnapping?
We decided to get this cool thing called a videotape and record her aquarium, because we're not going to sit there with the red lights and stare into a clam while we're high and do a camera. So we fixed a camera, and we didn't want to hide it because who the hell we're not thinking of someone stealing something, but we put it high enough, it's not really noticed, right? So it's pointing at the aquarium. We can see into the aquarium. Her kids, which are at the time like 1920, they're at their house, and we're picking up details. There was no audio or anything, but we can tell that they brought booze in. They're drinking, and sure, shit. They go over to the tank, they scoop them out, and they put them in glasses and shoot them back and choke them down.
They're shooting goldfish?
Not goldfish, her tropical fish. They had a sedontist down the neck. Thank God they swallowed it the right way, or they'd be in the hospital. They ate her fish hole. They didn't chew. Shot them back because they were drunk out of their mind.
Alcohol does wonderful things to him.
I've never been that drunk.
I had to sit there with this poor woman, and you have to watch this. And she's like, I'm going to bait his ass. Lost loses her mind. That son of a bitch. He's going to pay for each and every one of those and just lose ate the damn fish.
Parenting skills.
What a parenting skills?
My God.
Right? So apparently, I don't know, this must be a theme that people like. Stuff is missing, right? Well, I had another guy. He was showing me he had a few different aquariums and one salt water, right? No, blue ring, octopus. All right. And he said that fish are disappearing here, one at a time, here and there, just so you think, oh, they must be dying off. But he wasn't asking me for help. He was just showing me some other tanks. And yeah, I don't know what's going on with this. I can't keep fish. I just can't keep fish. And he's in there lifting up the lid. And he's leaning over, talking to me. And he's like adjusting something. He has a big stack of live rock, beautiful live rock with pieces of coral. He's fragging out in there. And as he's doing this, his hands in the tank. I think it was like an algae scrubber or something. And as he's doing this, this giant okay, let's reel back for a minute. You guys have seen the movie tremors, right?
Yes.
Right? One of my favorite movies. I was raised at an early age to love sci-fi movies. tremors, if you haven't seen it, has Kevin bacon. Kevin bacon is a delicious man. And go watch this. Go look at your local library. I don't even think it's on, like, Netflix or Amazon Prime. You're going to have to go hunt for this. tremors. Amazing rubber monster, scary movie. And they have these worms that come out of the ground and grab people. They're called grabloids, right? Yeah, it's the craziest shit. They got these, like, I don't know, like claw mouths and shit. You got to see the movie. So as he's doing this, the only way I can explain this is coming out of his live rock was a damn grab oil or a Bristol worm.
Big bristle worm.
It was warming up kind of feeling where there was disturbance in the force. Like he felt vibration, like him scraping the side. And it's kind of like just going out. And it was about stuck as far as my forearm. I'm not a small man, right? It stuck about that long out of his live rock. And I'm like all I do is like, freeze because I notice it. And like, grabloid. And he's like, what? And he looks down. Son of a bitch. He falls off his little chair and ladder, hits the ground like, what the shit was that? It's a grabbing and we're losing our minds. What was that? It had like this fangs or shit sticking out of its mouth. Oh, my God. I know where my fish have been going. Dude, aliens have landed and they're in your tank. What the hell is happening?
How big was this one?
This thing again? It stuck out of the rocks going to his arm. About as long as my arm. What's that? Like two and a half feet, foot? I don't know. measurement.
I didn't think they got that big.
Oh, my God. It was huge. And it just like wormed out and was just like going towards the friction.
The friction.
It was just crazy. He he stopped and like, all right, I'm going to deal with that. He grabbed duct tape, sealed the top. He didn't want that going anywhere. We started looking it up. babbitt worm.
What?
Bobbit. bobbitt Worm?
I think it was Lorena.
Bobbitt. bobbitt Worm.
Lorena.
I feel like that's like another 1950s love of your life.
Well, Lorena bobbitt was the guy that lorena Bob she was a gale that whacked her husband's thing off with a knife.
A bobbit worm, apparently, is this predator that's in the ocean, and they start quite small, but they can grow up to 10ft long. And they're just always one giant long string. They look like a giant corrugated tapeworm. And the end of it looks like the grab white off of the damn sci-fi movie. It's just they have no eyes, apparently, and they just like they were doing in his tank. They're going after the friction. Anything that moves or comes close, they just close their mouth on and fish disappear. And they pull them into their den. They dig and burrow in dirt and sand, and they just wait for fish to come close. It's the craziest, creepiest sci-fi shit. Look it up. Bob. It worm bobbitt. Worm Bobbit.
How'D you kill it?
I didn't deal with it. He took care of it.
He left the house screaming like a nine year old girl.
I think he said it was close to 5ft.
Oh, God.
It must have been in there for a long time. He said he had a big school, and they just slowly kept going away. So yeah, he must have been feeding it quite the healthy dose of fish.
Ew. Yeah. An expensive bobbit worm after he eats $100 worth of your fish.
Oh, it's gross.
More than that, even. We're talking saltwater back in the day. That's got to be like $500 fish.
I'm going to warn you right now. When you look up this, you're going to look it up on, like, YouTube and shit. Prepare for nightmares. It's some crazy stuff. And this is like it's not that common, apparently, but apparently comes in, like, live rock where you get the blue ring octopus and crap coming on live rock, and then they don't know what's there. And suddenly you'll just start losing fish.
Yes. Kevin bacon scares me, too.
He's a delicious man.
Oh, Lord.
Have you not seen him in footloose?
Yes.
He's earth's greatest superhero. According to guardians of the Galaxy, those.
Buns of steel could fight crime.
Could fight crime. Could fight crime, exactly. Is all done with your story?
Well, I'm done with at least that. That was a nice addition to Adam.
That actually was a nice story. That went right along with Adams. I got something. I don't know, it's not quite as creepy, but it's an itch not really. Oh, Lord. I wish you could be here in the studio and just watch me roll my eyes because they're going to hit my brain and bounce back up. All right, so I got a couple of stories I had written down, and this one here happened a long, long time ago. I was in a land before time. Land before time.
Before the wizard of ours.
Yes.
Before cable television.
Oh, Lord. And before phone booths. Yes. So I was driving a load of tropical fish in the dead of winter. January, coldest day of the flipping year, probably. I'm driving north all the way up to the Canadian border. I want it within 10 miles of Canadian border to deliver stuff. One of my suppliers talked me into ordering some large African toads. And I went I can't remember exactly what brand they were, what they were called goliath toads. Yeah. They were about two and a half pounds.
Oh, yeah, goliath.
That's goliath frogs.
Yeah. Eat mice.
Eat small children.
Exactly. And so I ordered some of these. I ordered like four just to see what they were like. Because this particular fish company that I bought, where they sold, because why?
I start with one. Right.
Why would you buy five of them?
I bought four, you dick wad.
Listen, what do you want? A cat or a frog? That's what you want.
Can I tell my story? I didn't interrupt. I guess I did interrupt.
Yeah, I did.
Lord. So you have to realize it's 2022.
Below, but it's a beautiful day because.
The sun's out in the dead of winter, which we don't get very often. We get a lot of cloudy days.
Only minnesotans say that 22 below with any sort of light or happiness is a form of happiness.
Exactly.
Good day.
And so I'm driving north of Bomiji, Minnesota, which is way north, and I'm heading up towards baudette. I have these toads in a box in my van. There's nothing separating my cargo space. It's just a minivan. I've got probably 1415 boxes of fish, and I got these toads, and the sun is coming through the window. And it's one of those days where you're driving and the sun hits you in the chest and you're feeling all warm and woozy and you're half falling asleep.
Are you high on prime? Is that what you had in the back?
No, I did not have any prime back then. I don't know about prime back there. And I'm driving down the road, and when you see a car up north, it's either going to be a cop or a cop. It's always a cop because there's nobody else driving up there. It's such an isolated area. As I'm driving, I noticed a cop is coming up behind me rather quickly. And I looked down at my speedometer. I'm only going like 61, 62 miles an hour in a 55 zone. I thought, well, what's up his butt? Maybe because I have a little bit larger van, what they tend to do is get behind you to kind of hide. So they'll meet an oncoming speeding vehicle and then they'll peel off and chase after that person they were drafting. Yeah, basically. So I was not really paying attention to the cop factor because he's back there for 15, 20 miles. And I'm driving and it's warm, the radio is on. It's beautiful. And all of a sudden one of these damn toads, which weigh about two and a half pounds, jumps out of the box, which was sealed, lands on the back of my fricking neck like a piece of cold god damn liver, and I hit.
No, please don't continue.
Oh, you guys. So it's like somebody lays a wet, cold liver on the back of your warm neck so you shit your pants. First you say it, then you do it. I kissed every the emergency lane, my lane, the other lane, the other emergency. I went across the back and forth on this road, back and forth, and I was probably up on two wheels screaming like a little girl and lights come on behind me.
And then I can imagine, wait, officer Billy Bob missing two front teeth.
No.
Comes up, looks in the windows like, what for God's name are you doing? And you're just holding this giant two pound frog in your hand like I was trying to kiss the prince. Exactly.
It is one of the minnesota's finest state patrol. And we love the state patrol around here, but they have no sense of humor.
None.
None. And anyway, he pulls me over and the first words out of his mouth is, what the hell are you doing? And I hold up this frog and I go he goes he looks at this toad, it's freaking January. He goes, do you want me to kill it? So then we play 20 questions along the highway with the freaking window open at 22 below zero.
What are you doing with the frog? What is that frog? Why is it on your face? Why are you driving this far north? Who the hell wants a frog in 20 degree weather?
Do you have this frog's consent? Stuff like that.
Why is the frog wearing lipstick and a dress?
Oh, my God. And anyway, he sat there and he.
Doesn'T know if he needs to call the news.
No, I'm going to tell you exactly what he did. Here's what he did.
Local chaplain, here's what I'm going to tell you.
He did. So he goes, he wrote a ticket.
No, you're disturbed amphibian.
No, he did not. He laughed his butt off. He told me to have a nice day, keep the frogs in the box. And he says, I can't wait to get back and tell everybody about this. I said, no, don't do this, don't do this. So I get 25, 30 miles north and there's a state patrolman along the highway. And as I drive by, he turns his light on and he's laughing his ass off. He'd already radioed ahead because he asked me where I was going and I told him. And so, yeah, I got every state patrolman, which I saw two more of that. They turned the lights on and there it giggles their butt off.
They gave you like a full on path. Yeah, they had to see the van that had the creepy mutant frog.
Yeah, this poor guy's had a bad day. He had two and a half pound frog land on his neck when he was sleeping. dang near. And I kissed every freaking lane. I went across that lane three, four times, and oh, God.
Did it just rotate through the box?
What's that, Adam?
It just ripped through the box, didn't it?
Yes, it just pushed its way through the box. I had a tape shut with a few holes poked in there and stuff. And not only was the one loose, the other three are in the back. And the one was sitting on top of a hamster cage.
Did you eat the hamsters?
No, but he was looking for lunch.
Oh, I bet he would have. They like hamsters almost as much as they like disabled children.
What was that about? Oh, my God.
The father small children.
You know, comments like that make frog incest look safe.
Oh, Lord. And so that was my one cute little story. Kind of like yours, but not really.
Oh, real cute.
You guys make fun of me. I've had a lot of runnings with the law.
So what we're going to do, right, is, because you have supply of different stores, we have to just drop boxes off at Jeff and nancy's place in fargo. They own a place called Tropical Fish Shop. It's a fun place.
West fargo, North Dakota.
And we're going to bring them a goliath frog, because I think that's going to be a hot item in fargo.
I don't think they're illegal anymore.
They're not. They're not.
Not anymore. This is probably back in, like, the early 90s.
Yeah.
I don't even think you can bring them into the country.
Yeah, no, there's frog jumping competitions down south, and they use them all the.
Time for those things.
Well, because they have the longest legs of any frog.
It's cheating. Oh, they're delicious. And they also feel like wet liver on the back of your neck when you're driving down the road.
The more you talk, the more I see dresses on frogs.
It was a consensual thing.
Excuse me, officer.
Oh, Lord.
Her name is betty. betty Green.
Betty Long Legs.
Betty Long Legs. All right, Adam, you're up, buddy.
I'm going to sit here and just punch Robin.
Dare you. You can't just land a bomb like that. That was supposed to be, like, for the end of the episode.
Where are we supposed to top I've got better.
Oh, God. All right.
Okay.
I have Adam, but it's more of a guy visiting my store did this to me.
He wasn't interested in lipstick, was he? No.
So every now and then, I'd have a tank that I put off to the side, and it would be Adams hobby Tank. That's where I put my endlers. And then I had other cool stuff. And do you remember when I had seahorses Jim?
Yes.
I got them from you. So I. Got a group of seahorses. I had them in a bare bottom tank. I got them to eat. I'd sell a few, but I had two that would do the mating thing. Every morning. They would literally go and they'd do the mating dance and greet each other hello and everything. And the male was all pregnant because seahorse's males carry the babies and the females don't really do anything in the pouch.
Just like your house, right?
The way you're describing it, it sounds like an ABC original dance Adam just admitted to.
I said, just like your house. Like your wife doesn't do anything and do all the work. No, I can't believe you didn't catch that. She's going to punch you in the face when you get edit that out.
We're going to have to do a podcast of Adam and the doghouse. At the doghouse, we can do a.
Three week series of Adam and the doghouse.
Do continue, sir.
Okay, I'm sorry to interrupt.
So the seahorses, it was a mated pair, and every morning, even as the male was pregnant, every morning the male would and the female would do their morning dance. I had a guy come into the store, and he wanted to buy the pair of seahorses. And I said, no, I'm not selling them because the male is kind of pregnant. And I don't know the whole thing.
She's kind of pregnant.
Can you just imagine that being a human thing? Like, get the pillow, becky, my back hurts.
It would never happen.
Was your wife ever kind of pregnant with the four kids or just pregnant? I'm just wondering. Kind of pregnant.
That one was. Some of them were pretty rough.
It's not pregnant. It's infected with the Adam Super sauce.
Oh, yes.
Wait, is that what you're going to call it now? Is Adam super sauce.
That's what we should name the biological bacteria, adam Supersorce. We're going to call Robbie Chan from Blue Crown aquatics and get that patented.
Oh, yeah.
Okay. So I've given up on life itself on this story.
So back to seahorses. Right? Focus down. Now, seahorses, he wanted to buy them.
And they're doing the jiggly jigger.
He wanted to buy them.
You're pregnant.
I wouldn't sell them because the male is pregnant, and the guy really wanted to buy them. And it's like ten minutes before store closed. So I'm like, no, I can't sell them. And I said, you can come back after they're done, and I will be more than happy to sell them for you. We'll give you like, $500. No, I'm not going to sell them because the male is pregnant. And I said, Look, I've got to go. And I was helping a couple of customers at the front, and it was store close. And he goes, well, okay, fine. And he just left. I still know what this guy looks like when I find him, because I will there will be problems. So I come in the next morning. Turn on my light. Because this is the routine they have to waiting for them to do their dance. They were both dead on the bottom of the tank. Do you want to know why they were dead on the bottom of the tank?
Because they weren't breathing.
Yes. The reason why was because Mr. asshole threw pennies in my tank. Pennies for seahorses have a tendency to kill them.
Copper.
The copper and the pennies killed the seahorses. He never set foot back into my store, but I will find him eventually.
That was kind of a sad story. It wasn't really funny. It was just kind of sad.
Well, it's a learning experience. Don't have cool things out for people.
To look at on the Aquarium Guys podcast. We are not ashamed of talking about arse mistakes or worse yet, people stupid mistakes when they come into our store. And we've done research, right? We had a private investigator do some homework and we can't bring this to light, but we pretty sure that Schmelta Airlines was involved.
I will blame Schmalt.
Someday there's going to be a knock on the door. There's going to be a couple of guys in big aviator glasses going, we'd like to talk to you. And you know why? Because they're lost and they can't find the airport. They're not here to rough us up. They just can't find their way to work.
No.
Aren't they usually the drunk ones?
Just in Minnesota?
They're going to find your dead body in Florida and they're going to be like, we need to ship it up to Minnesota. And they're like, no, he needs to be cremated first.
Yeah, exactly. Well, that was a really sad story, Adam, but thanks for bringing me down.
I haven't done sea horses since I haven't worked with them since because it was hold on. That was heartbreaking.
We need to take a moment of silence for listeners. So right here what we're going to do is we're going to play a clip of what was it? Sarah mclaughlin.
Oh, that's it.
Right here.
Yeah.
There you go.
Three, two, right here. In the arms of the eight. From here from the star poor hotel room and the air. Oh, God. Why did they use those on commercials? I just empty my wallet every time I see people starving with that song.
Oh, I used to like that song. And then they started beating puppies or whatever they do with that. It's a terrible, terrible peta. No, not pita. No. Sarah mclaughlin you hear the first part.
Of that song and you're like, next station immediately. You just can't do it because your heart dissipates. We need an uplifter. I'm going to take the reins on this one.
I hope it's not as sad as the last one.
All right. No, we're going to laugh at rob's. That's what we're going to do.
Leave your clothes on.
I'm 29 years old, right? I got married just a tickle after 21, just like, a couple of days after I turned 22. Right. And in my career experience, I'm normally an It professional, and I own my own business for three years. And my wife, the person that's now my wife, told me to pick her the business, so I no longer have that business. And I was trying to get her off my back at the time. So I'm like, job at Walmart. That's what I'll do. I'll pick up one day a week at Walmart, and that'll get her off my back while I continue working this and hiring people for my business. And it got cushy. I punched out, and it felt good working 16 hours, days for yourself, repairing computers versus an easy eight hour shift, telling people that Walmart sucks. I mean, you pick and you work there.
Okay, good.
You pick. Wasn't near as the amount of money, but it wasn't a bad gig either. So I worked there for about two years. And if you passed a drug test in most walmarts, you're like, oh, management now, right? So immediately I was management in multiple different departments, and they sent me around. I was a manager to go to different stores to help clean up problematic stores. That was my job. So I got to go all of these weird bunk town places and then bigger cities also to help out in Minnesota. So I got sent to this one place called thief River Falls. thief River Falls is like, 40 miles north of two Indian casinos. So there's one to 40 miles and one right next to them, and that.
Is all there is, casinos.
You're in the middle of God's country. There's no power lines. All you see is a random moose. And when I first rolled into this town, the town scared me. The first thing you see after the casino is a shed with bullet holes to the front windows of the glass. And that's their movie theater. And the only reason I knew that is because through the bullet holes, you could see a poster for spiderman playing. Right? So I'm trying to find my hotel. All the hotels are booked up because the fairs in town, the fairing Away, goldfish and carneys and all the freakville, right now they have two hotels.
Carneys don't stay in hotels.
Well, apparently these guys got the economy rate because the hotels were never used, right?
Wow.
So I'm trying to find directions because clearly Google Maps doesn't know how the hell this place works.
At the time, Google Maps probably never been up there.
So I pull over on this dude with one tooth. Like, how do you get there? I just turn right at the Rusty Nail. The Rusty Nail didn't know what direction to go.
The Rusty Nail is truly normally, he'd.
Go bar north is what he said, with an F. North.
North.
Go north. Right at the Rusty Nail. It's thief River Falls.
I've been there.
It's a shithole.
I go up, it's a shithole. It is a shithole, shit hole.
You guys are dishemering.
I drive through this place, right? I go down Main Street and sure shit, there's a bar. And it's the Rusty Nail. And the only reason I saw that is because the one piece of neon left was sparking as it was turning on and off. But below it you couldn't miss. The four people were in a fistfight outside with broken glass. Seeing the cop sitting there on the side like it's arms crossed, like, whoever wins this is getting locked up. It was just too much to take in. So I just kept driving. I know that was the Rusty now I took a right. I finally got to this place. I don't even know what was called at the time.
The parasite motel.
It was under remodel. So when I say this is an HBO hotel they used to have old hotels where you only enter from the outside and you have an actual metal, wooden key. It had, like, some wooden key chain on it and the rusty metal key. So you go up and the gal sitting there on her fourth pack of cigarettes going how can I help you, honey? One of those things. I'm a manager from Walmart. They should have called ahead, have my room reserved. I told them that we were full. I don't know what you want from me. Please. I have no place to stay. Frankly, I shit my pants when I drove past the Rusty Nail. I need somewhere. Well, I tell you what, sweetie. You look good. I got one place. It's not as pretty as the rest, but I'll take it. Whatever it is, I'll take it. Here you go. Here's the key. You have a good night now. Also, ice machine shit on. I wouldn't recommend trying it. Well, thanks for that warning. So I go around the back because they have a whole lineup from this hotel, right? All these weird random doors. I go in the back to find one door that's not like anyone else. It's older. I open it up and the biggest cloud of dust hits my face. Like I'm eating it, right? And it smelt and looked like the last people were there were when the doors were in town.
Oh, Lord.
It had three inch shag. I kicked up a rabbit when I'm walking through. It had a thin line of dust across everything. Paper machete lamps and the biggest old wooden crank knob TV you've ever seen in your life.
So you thought come home.
No, it was hotter than hell. Like, what am I supposed to do? It's 95 degrees outside. I'm a fat bitch and I need some AC now. So I tried to turn on the AC in this giant, giant window. Units barely in there. I try to turn it on and I'm already disgruntled about the whole room. The whole because I have to be here for two weeks at Walmart. I turn on the knob and this whole thing sounds like some sort of industrial factory. Just like you turn on an old washer with nothing but metal rods in it, just honk, kong, kong, kong, kong. I'm like, oh, God, it's going to fall out the window. I'm holding the sides of it. And then just like that, it's something like a gunshot. Just poof and spit, pine needles, rat shit, whatever was in there, into my mouth.
You're making this up.
No, I vomited. And then I'm like, I can't do this. So they sent a maiden there. They tried to clean up the best they could. They got me new bed sheets. They thought they had it cleaned. They went back in there and cleaned. And I spent there for two weeks. Now, the real story that was just.
Leading up to it, oh, my God, I'm tired.
Right? Is I had to work at this Walmart. And the Walmart, it was destroyed. It looked like children were in there for three days. And they threw all the toys and all objects they could in all directions. Like they were all like, here's $5. See if you crack it up. And they just went ham just through the whole store. But they have no they have no employees because Fever or Falls has two people.
They have two factories. Yes.
They have articat Factory and Digiki, which makes all these computer parts, right?
And they pay well.
They pay very well. So that means if you can pass a drug test, you're a manager somewhere in thief for Falls. So Walmart was the hardest to get hit. No one wanted to work at Walmart when they're paying $25 an hour at the factory. So I had to clean up with no employees and just start going through the store with a small, tiny bit of help that was encouraged from other places. So two weeks we went through the store, and I finally got to the pet department and the I don't know.
Where we're going, how we get wrapped.
This up here, they have this giant tank system, all classic Walmart. It's called Mars units. It's like four tanks upon four tanks upon four tanks. And they have this whole working system. And I looked at it like it was a space alien. It looked like it was covered in the orange gob monster like you see from some horror movies. Every single tank was covered in a living slime. It was pulsating an orange, neon orange. When you put a light to it, it just popped like Christmas. It was crazy just going through every tank, and there was not a single fish. But here's the deal. Walmart has a policy that if they don't have the product in and the vendors there, they're just going to drop a fish in the tank because they're going to fill a hole anyway, regardless of how the tanks are stated. So they've been dropping fish, killing fish for over like a month in this thing. So it's just covered in dead fish that they try to scoop out through this orange muck. And they sealed it because it started to stink. So I'm like, all right, we got everything else taken care of in the store. I'm going to use my last two days here to clean up the aquarium tank. So I stripped this whole thing down. It takes me the whole day. And this stuff, it's so gooey and shitty. And I found out why it was moving, was because there's live fish stuck in it.
So what was the stuff?
I have no idea to this day. But after I got it all done, I went back to the redneck Hotel and the entire next day, for twelve straight hours, me was vomiting in the toilet, just profusely. I couldn't hold any food, my skin turned white, and I started getting reactions all over my hands. And the other woman associate was with me, had the same issue, but they didn't have their hands in the tank. So whatever it was some sort of horrible airborne toxin, me and another person got horrible sick and just the craziest thing. So if you're listening and you've ever dealt with an orange slimy substance in a tank, like bright orange, please message into the cram Guys podcast. Because this day I've been researching it, trying to find if I have some hidden cancer that I don't know about thanks to Walmart. Wow.
I had six beers listen to that story and I'm still depressed.
It was terrible, just continually adding fish to it and the fish disintegrate.
Oh, my Lord.
The only thing I could think of is that it's a slime mold of some kind.
I don't know.
And you got sick.
I just want to call that fungus guy that was on jorgen's podcast like a week ago and like, please wipe some Walmart aquariums before they throw them away.
Jeffers and they're all gone now, so that's probably part of the problem, right?
It started with tha for falls and just spread everywhere.
Wow, that was a beautiful story. That was cool.
You're welcome.
Wow. My story is not quite as depressing, but I do want to talk about my dog last week. And you've already heard the story rob's, about my dog, who. I have two dogs at my home. I have a little tiny shihtzu half piccapoo, and we call her Abbey. And she is a little tiny dog, looks a lot like benji. Very well behaved. She's in love with my wife and only deals with me when my wife is gone. The other dog we have is a golden retriever, but it's an English cream retriever, so some people call it a white golden retriever. She's incredibly smart and actually loves Robbie and my son so much that when they come over between my Robbie or my son and she cries. She's got this sad thing.
Not for you. No, for me.
Just for you and just for my son.
Like all the women when we go.
Out to outings oh, yeah, everybody's just dropping robbie just dropping their panties. Exactly. So anyway, I have the same routine when I get home from work and they're afternoon. I'm usually home about 233 o'clock in the afternoon because I go in very early. I come home, I let my dogs outside so they can go out and relieve themselves. I go downstairs in my basement. I have about 2025 tanks down there. I go down and feed all my shrimp and my fish. Normally when I'm downstairs feeding it, both dogs will come in and come downstairs to greet me and stuff. And then it's time for them to have lunch and I go upstairs and make them lunch. Well, this particular day, abby comes downstairs, a little dog comes downstairs and greets me and stuff and I pick her up and rub her belly and tell her she's pretty and stuff, just like I do with my wife. And I go upstairs and Gracie, our big dog, is laying there on her little bed. What was strange was that there was a coat in the middle of my sunroom that I've never seen before.
Did it have any logos or something on it?
No, not really any logos. But I went over and I thought, oh, is somebody here? And I start kind of I left the patio door open and we're in a small a community, but it's not uncommon for my son to come over and throw his coat on the floor. But I pick it up and I look at it and there's a pair of keys in there, there's a pack of cigarettes in there and there's somebody's bill fold.
And in the bill fold I had a picture of a frog and a wedding dress.
Wow, you like that story, didn't you? So I kind of thought, is there somebody in the house here? Does somebody come into the patio door when I was gone? My wife has an aluminum baseball bat that I bought for her as a housewarming gift because she wants some protection.
Well, let's get back to that. Like hold that point, because we need to talk about that. That's a terrible housewarming gift.
Exactly.
Welcome to the house. Here's a baseball bat. God knows you need it.
Yeah, you'll need it in case somebody attacks you. So I grabbed this bat and I walk around and we have a pretty good size house. And so I went up through every room of the house, opened up closets, yelled out, hey, is there anybody here?
He's like, no, that's just a midget. That was there before.
That's right. Well, no, he lives up there.
And so his name is Charles.
Yeah, Charles. He's our butler. And came downstairs and I went down to grab this coat again, as I grabbed this coat, gracie reaches for it with her mouth. Now, she's a golden retriever. And the one thing I didn't say is that she carries something wrong in her mouth, like her blanket or a toy all day long. And so I thought, oh, did you bring this in the house? Also thought, oh, she probably grabbed it from one of the neighbors or something. So I went outside into the backyard, and there was nobody around. So then I walked to the front of the house, and across the street we have a city park. And there was a city worker over there with a pickup truck kind of wandering around aimlessly. And I walked over and said, hey.
I said you smoke marlboroughs.
I said, hey, are you missing anything? Are you missing a coach? And he goes, yeah. And I said, I've got it. And he looks at me and he goes, what? And I said, my dog, I think, came over and grabbed your coat. And she was right behind me. She had her blanket in her mouth. And I said, was it this dog here? He goes, yeah. She came over and standing in the driveway, and I said hello to her. And she came over and I petted her, told her to go back home. While he was working on the back of the back of his truck. There's a fire hydrant out there, and they're getting it winterized, and they're putting up these big red flags. So when we get 3ft of snow here, you still can find the fire hydrant during the fire. So when there's a fire in our neighborhood, you spend about half an hour digging out the fire hydrant, and then you don't put the fire out because the house is already gone. But anyway, I said, well, I think I got your coat back at the house. And so he kind of going like, what the heck? And so he followed me over, and I said, I apologize. I said, my dog probably just grab your coat. And we got back over there, and sure enough, it was his coat. And he opens up and I said, you got everything in your pockets now? Because she might have lost it dragging it across the yard. So he opens it up and there's his keys and smokes. And he opens up his bill fold.
And he's missing the 20.
And he goes, there's no money in there. And I'm thinking, oh, crap. He goes, but that's mine because I.
Don'T have any money.
I went, yay. And so he goes, you don't mind if I take some selfies with your dog, do you? And I'm thinking, oh, kind of weird, are you? But he goes, nobody's going to believe this. And he says, I'm going to tell my wife wife did. So yeah, there's this city worker out there in my front lawn taking pictures of my dog. And so, yeah, my dog is a kleptomaniac so, two things, right?
Number one, we've learned the lesson here. We all have that if you see a man's coat in your living room and you have a dog, don't immediately think your wife's cheating on you. And number two, Kyle, if you're listening, good skills in the klepto training.
Here we go.
We're two steps away from stealing just their wallet.
Just their wallet.
We work for Coat because we can't get it yet. We'll get to wallet. We'll work on this together. And next meeting.
All right, so that was my sad story. I have another one later on, but it's not a sad. It's kind of funny.
Well, we have to have more funny notes. We can't keep vomiting about walmart fungus and talking about how people kill shit with pennies.
Wow. This one.
All right, Penny Killer, what's your next story?
Penny Killer? I didn't do it.
Yeah, prove it.
Well, you're just mad because you didn't want to listen to your two cent.
Do you think Delta did?
That was good, Rob.
That was the good one.
Yeah, give us your two cent worth, or let's blame Delta for killing your stuff.
Schmelta.
It's not delta. It could never be. Possibly Delta.
Schmelta Airlines frame you for murder. Check that out on YouTube, by the way.
Yeah, it's a bit by John mulaney. Just type in john mulaney, Delta Airlines.
Yeah. You think we've got anger issues? Talk to that guy.
Who's John mulaney?
He's an amazing comedian.
Amazing comedian to him. I'm going to have to look him up.
All right, your turn.
Your turn, buddy.
Okay, so I don't know if I told Jim should remember this one, so here's another saltwater thing. I had four saltwater tanks.
Well, six, but two don't count.
Well, I tell my wife that so she doesn't realize what the electric bill is going for.
Wow.
No.
In my store, I had six saltwater tanks. Three of them were for store display fish. One of them was like my quarantine tank. The other one was like brackish slash saltwater coral tank. And then the other one was where the seahorses were.
That's too many slashes. All right. You can't have that all in one tank.
Not unless you're playing for Guns and roses.
Okay, Slash.
Anyways, thank you. You had to explain that, Josh.
Wow. For those who are slash plays with Guns and roses.
I remember who Slash is.
He has the hat. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. 30 somethings.
Okay.
Go ahead, Adam.
So, I was in the bottom tank, and in the bottom tank, I had my dangerous fish that I couldn't put in the reef tank or the peaceful fish tank or with the live rock. So I had, like, my moray eels, my lion fish, rabbit fish, which are poisonous or venomous, stuff like that. So I'm in there digging around the rock. So I was digging in the tank, and all of a sudden, I was talking to the customer. All of a sudden, my hand just goes to the most severe fire pain I've ever had. And I'm like, oh, shit, this is bad. Because then I realized, oh, Adam touched the dwarf lionfish that he had in the fish tank. And if anybody's ever seen a dwarf lionfish, they know they've got spikes all over. They got spines down the side, spines on all the fins. They're a nasty fish to deal with, and you have to be really careful to handle them.
And delicious.
Well, you don't handle them, but you know what I mean. Just deal with them and deal with in the tank. I go and I run to the back. I say, I got a run and I go to the back and I put on the hottest water possible on my arm and on my hand to try to dissipate the venom. And that doesn't work. Then I have a jug of vinegar that I kept in the back just for this emergency. Although I later found out it only works for jellyfish.
No, you have to piss on yourself. You can't use vinegar.
Yeah, well, I thought vinegar worked.
So what you're saying is you whipped out your dick and you just bumping yourself.
I poured vinegar on my hand and on my arm where I got grazed.
By this lionfish and you smelled like a pickle.
And this is why he had to bleach the octopus, because he knows what he does with other venomous creatures is you cannot pee on yourself after you got bit by an octopus.
No blue rings will kill you. There's just nothing that you can deal with.
Lions, fish are secretly an aphrodisiacs. This whole time he's just hung like a hog.
Wow. This has gone south.
This has gone way south.
Get it below the border.
Oh, no.
Continue, please.
So I called Jim and Jim I go, Jim, I got nailed by a dwarf lionfish. This is the jim's exact words were, I bet that hurts.
I've been a dad too, and I'm.
Like, it hurts a lot. What do I do? Well, I don't know. I'm like I did the hot water. That didn't work.
I ran out of hot water.
I'm doing the vinegar that isn't working.
So he's reading the back of the box and it says if it lasts longer than 4 hours to call your doctor.
Call your doctor.
No.
Or use a phone.
So actually, Jim got a hold of Julie for me.
I did.
That was the first time I ever do you remember that?
Yeah, I called her.
Yeah. And then she called me.
No one called a doctor. You call your sales rep. That's right.
And she put me on hold for 15 minutes. adam's dying. Get back to me when you get a chance. I'm driving. I don't care. I didn't sell it to them. It's not my problem.
Yes, you did.
I know. I was just trying to get myself out. Of a lawsuit.
Jimmy'S just sitting there going like, I don't know, is this usda thing? I don't know where I'm going to get the call from.
Well, it was my fault. I forgot that I had the damn lionfish in there. So finally the pain went away and my hand just went numb and I couldn't move it, like completely numb. And it just kept going higher and higher. It went past my elbow and up to my shoulder.
And the whole time you're just hearing the seagrass hold music.
No, I hadn't heard from anybody.
And I'm like freaking out.
And I'm like, well, maybe I should call the doctor.
I was having lunch from Grand rapids.
There is no doctor smart enough to deal with it.
Yeah, I was having lunch somewhere, so I really didn't care. I mean, they find a dead. Where was I?
Don't know. You sounded concerned over the phone.
I like, how no one's like, let's Google this.
That's probably before you could giggle. It on your inner tube.
Oh, no.
Well, it was like early. I don't remember. I don't remember. That was not going through my mind.
Your pain just kills me. I think it's funny.
I'm going to piss my pants. Oh, my God. Okay, let's recap here just for listeners because I need this. You're sitting there, you have a venomous creature in your tank. Number one, you're like, oh, well, that was there.
Hey, let's go bob on for apple.
We didn't put like, don't stick your hand in there, may cause death. No warning. Venomous creature. Not even a little bell for when you open the lid. Just stick your hand in there and see how it happens. And two, after you get stung. You didn't have a prep plan. We didn't know what happens when venomous thing touches hand.
Call your buddy jail.
So then you're like, well, let's go the next best thing, because I don't want to pee on myself, but I'm going to use the on jemima treatment and just grab whatever syrup or liquids in the kitchen happen to be vinegar and pour it on yourself. No, didn't work.
No, this is at my store. It nailed me at my store because I didn't keep them at the house.
All right, well, you were cleaning your coffee pot and had vinegar around and you're like, let's try that. No, next I'm going to call my fish dealer and say, hey, I'm going to die. What do you think? I bet that sucks, didn't it? Which just shows the bond between Jim and Adam, right?
I had deep concern. I thought, what if he dies? I won't sell nothing next week, and.
Then proceeds to call the wholesaling rep to be put on hold while it's creeping up to his heart. All right, thank you. Continue.
Just so she calls me just for the list.
He ain't dead.
Yeah, I'm not.
No, but now I know why he talks funny.
Now you know why he writes with his left hand, his right hand.
I just thought he dabbed his hand.
No reason.
You thought he had a stroke, didn't you?
I did. Now I know it's a stroke.
So I finally get a phone call from Florida, and I answer it right away and it's on the phone. She goes. Hi.
This is Julie.
And I'm like, hey, this is Adam. And she told me what happened. She goes, that is how you met.
A bitch, doesn't it? And Adam is just like, who are.
You people calling long distance to make fun of you?
Are all fish dealers sadistic?
Pretty much.
They're all sadistic.
They have to be. So I'm talking to her and I'm like so she's like, well, has the pain dissipated? Yes, but the problem is she stayed.
At Holiday in Express the night before. So she was a doctor.
I said, literally, I told her, I'm like, the problem is my hand doesn't work. She goes, what do you mean your hand doesn't work? Well, I can't move my arm and the numbness is growing progressively further up my left arm.
Tell me at that very moment, you're just like and then the numbness places into my face, and then I don't.
Know, what do we want? Like snoopy?
You're walking on the street. Did you go to a dentist? No, I do not have the glass palate.
That's not even the best part.
I can't wait for this.
She's talking to me and I'm like explaining to her all this stuff, and.
She'S holding up two fingers in Florida going, how many fingers? And you're going, I don't know. I can't see you in Florida.
She was like, okay, that's a good one.
You're on the phone.
You'Re 2000 miles away. I cannot see how many fingers are holding up.
No, she's talking to me and she's like, Where do you live? And I'm like, Grand rapids, Minnesota. She goes, Where the hell is that? I said, I'm an hour and a half from the middle of nowhere. And she goes, well, where is the nearest triage hospital? I said, Well, I don't know. Probably duluth. That's like an hour and a half away.
You're going to die.
She goes, these are her exact words? Well, I guess you're.
Wow, that's not nice.
And she goes, Let me ask what.
We do down here.
And then she put me on hold. She went and called me. She goes, yeah, we've never had this.
Problem because nobody's stupid, nobody's that dumb, nobody.
She's actually been stung a couple of times.
We're going to get her back on this podcast.
Did you ask if she peed on herself?
No, she told me that what happens is she actually got stung by even a dead one because apparently the dead ones will release the stuff, release the venom.
They're the really fast ones.
But they'll get you every time.
Every time they'll jump right out. You'll sneak up on you.
So she said, well, if it gets any worse, you probably are going to have to go into the hospital. And I said, Well, I'm good luck.
Driving with one arm.
I don't want to go to the hospital.
Adam'S pain is my saving grace. I love it.
He walks in and it's like, oh, you have a cloth palate. I do not have a cloth pallet. I've been stung by a fish. He's trying to cut out. What's it called? It's a flying fish. A what? A flying fish.
That was probably one of the worst things I've ever been stung with. And she said that she got stung by one of the big ones, and that's really bad. That that'll bring, like apparently a few guys have been netting them at sea grass and putting them in the bag, but they'll get nailed by one, and she says that will bring them right, like, boom, they'll go right to their knees.
I'm assuming they have, in Florida, anti venom, because they have venomous creatures. We have one venomous creature, I think in Minnesota, it's the cotton mouth, and it's at the very southernmost tip.
Has rattlesnakes, too.
Yeah, we have diamondback rattlesnakes down by.
Your adam lives there's. Diamondback rattles.
Well, don't stick your hand in the garbage can.
And if you do, don't pee on yourself.
Yeah, peeing won't help. Instead, you have to have Jimmy suck out the snow.
No, I saw that movie and jimmy's not doing it.
Jim actually called the next day and he's like, so you better. Well, my arm still doesn't work. Well, at least you're alive.
Hold on.
I was just trying to see if I had an order for the next week.
Time out. There's so much to digest here. So you talk to Julie. Well, you're and you know you have to go to the doctor. You didn't go to the doctor?
No drive there's no drive through their McDonald's.
Oh, my God. So you just sat there with half of your body completely numb?
It was more of just an arm all the way up to the shoulder, but yeah.
Did you at least close for the day?
No, I finished the day out.
Oh, my I just could move the arm. Can you imagine him sitting there? Excuse me, sir, are you interested in my face? I just want to tell you excuse me, can you hand me the net? I only have one item that works.
Can you help me button my shirt? Because I can't button my shirt.
Can you dab the spittle coming out of my mouth right now?
So between those two, that isn't even the worst venomous thing that I've had in my pet store.
Do not talk about hopefully put like.
A skull and crossbones on the label before you open the box.
No, that's another story.
What have we learned today?
Keep your hand there's so much. Don't pee on yourself unless it's jellyfish. Number one. Number two, if you're a dipshit and decide to stick your hand in a tank with a venomous fish, don't touch dead ones because they'll still hurt you. And then when you do get stung, for God's sake, don't call fish vendors.
People who don't care. that'd be another name for it. People who don't care don't do that.
Because on the phone, what do you want me to do about it? How many fingers am I holding up?
Exactly.
And then you call the next day, being the good salesman, you're like, hey, one more fish. What did you think, Jimmy? I don't know if I want hey.
I've got a special on lionfish. Two for dollar.
I'm not even afraid of lionfish.
You are, my brave little toaster. You are.
I'm sitting there when I have a stingray in my tank, even though they will never sting you.
Oh, yeah, I tell that to Steve irwin.
Yeah, I get a 24 inch tongue to feed it, but you're just sitting there at lying fish and like, oh, ow. ow.
So that's the last time you go bobbing for apples in the aquarium, huh?
No, I don't even remember. I think I was trying to get a fish out of the tank for somebody, and I completely forgot that I had the dwarf lionfish in it. I ended up getting the fish out, though.
You were a brave little toaster.
All right, whose turn is it?
I don't know myself.
I thought nothing could top the frogs. Now nothing can top the venomous stuff. I have a question for my next story, because I don't know if this.
Is are you going to ask yourself or something?
No, I need piss boys advice here.
Oh, this guy here on the yeah, that guy, yeah. Let's hear it.
All right. So when I was younger, right? We did a lot of fun things in the classroom, right? In elementary school, I went to a private school in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota. It was wonderful. And the teacher was very open to new ideas. So each year we had a theme, right, of a different continent that we'd study all year long as a theme. So we were doing, I believe, just Asia. So we decided, hey, teacher, please, could we get goldfish? And we got a kiddie pool and made a pond in the center of the classroom. All the desperate around it. It was beautiful, right?
They still have it.
They still have it still. My fish that I put in there to this day.
Our buddy ty, who does tank maintenance, goes over and takes care of a saltwater tank. I was just over there with him not three weeks ago, and they still.
Have it over there, and they still have my original goldfish from all those years ago. I have to do math. Like, what was that, 2002? Thousand 2000, probably from then. So what, 18 years old?
Yeah.
That's pretty incredible.
And it's still a kitty pool, right?
And the fun thing is, we didn't know just on this little part before I go to the next tangent is the floor was heated, and we never put two and two together. That putting a kitty pool on the floor of a heated floor continually makes them in a breeding cycle, so they're always acting like they're going to breed. So we got mops and had the whole thing.
That's what you want to see. We've when you're in elementary school, you want to see the fish getting on.
Well, the fun thing was the fun thing we had the not disabled kids, but the kids that had intense Add, they couldn't focus for anything. So every time they get distracted, rather than being a ruckus in class, to just stare at the fish. So it was a massive improvement in class for all the kids. And it's still there because of it, because it's such a success. But one year we're doing Africa, and they said, hey, we should get frogs and a lizard and whatever, right?
I learned my lesson at the end of the year.
They're like, well, we can't take care of these. We don't have a tie to come take care of these fish.
Let's dissect them.
Let's just take care of this. So they're like, hey, kids, who wants the lizard? I do. Who wants the frogs? And my buddy's like, I do. And I went over to his buddy's place because my mom was going to have surgery. So I stayed at his house for a week, and we just got to his place. We sat down this sweet terrarium of frogs, and there's two green African frogesque things. I don't know what they were. They're bright green, and they wouldn't move during the day. They just sat on a leaf. They wouldn't do anything. You put food the food would be gone the next day when you come back, maybe I know. They were just like little green frogs, and they're cuter than hell. I'm sitting there in his room, and we're sleeping in the middle of the night. We hear, thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk. Oh, it must be frogs. All right. We kind of ignored it. They kind of calm down, and we just fall back to sleep. And then in the middle of the night, we shot out of bed, shitter pants. We're like, what's going on? We book it outside. We're like someone got stabbed. I run upstairs. I'm slipping. There was a dog I tripped over. I hit my head on the stairs. There it was again, like, oh, my God, what is happening? And there's only three people in the house his dad, him, and me. What is going on? Is somebody like we have neighbors. Maybe there's someone got stabbed or shot. We're going outside. Leather, do you see anything? No, I don't see anything. Why is your head red? I gashed my head. Ignore it. Go. And we're just looking what the hell is going on? We're going up and down the stairs. The dad wakes up, what shit's name is happening? And as he's coming to us talking to his dad, we don't know what's going on, and we can't figure it out. We go downstairs because we heard it coming from the bedroom again. And sure shit, it's those damn frogs. In the middle of the night, the frogs are screaming, screaming. And it sounded like a woman was getting stabbed.
Oh, no.
It was like a human scream. And they both did it. Oh, it was the craziest shit I've ever seen in my life.
Oh, my God.
Oh, I've never had such a heart attack. So is that normal? Yes, that's normal. So people should have on pet stores may make you shit your pants. No one noticed because it was at school all year, and no one's there in the middle of the night. So who knows if some bum was outside listening to someone getting raped inside the school? It was the most terrorizing thing. So public service announcement, know that frogs will keep you up forever. Don't get those frogs. Get goliath frogs instead.
There you go.
They're cooler, and you can make out with them like Jimmy does.
No. Wow. All that screaming made me hungry.
It was awful.
Yeah, I bet it was awful. Well, I've got another story. This is kind of a long story. I know for a fact I've never told rob's. I don't think I've ever told Adam. As a matter of fact, when my wife and I were having dinner just before I came over to do the podcast, I was telling her about it. She goes, I've never heard this story. So this is a long, long time ago.
Glasses to you, sir.
In the land of make believe, adam.
Is just sitting there like, I believe I heard that story.
He's over there trying to get his hand to work.
It works.
It works. He's probably hold up in the middle finger right now.
I mean, every time I reach out my pinky, he goes to the left.
I went down to Minneapolis one time, and I stopped in central Minnesota. I'm not even tell you what city it is. I've made up the names of the two people that own the pet store because this made the news.
I know exactly who it is.
It made the news. It made the news fascinating.
I don't think I've ever told Adam about this.
You certainly haven't told me.
So I'm driving down the cities one day, and I was looking for pet stores to try to because I was a district, but I was on a day off. So I stopped in, talked to this particular pet store, and said, hey, I got angel fish. Would you be interested? And she goes, yeah, if you get anything that's dark, because I never can get black angel fish. I always get Silveries and stuff. I said, yeah, I got black. She goes, well, next time you're down, bring me some. So she ordered like 50, and I went down there like a week later, and I dropped them off, and she goes, hey, I really like these and stuff, and if they live in my tanks and I'm able to sell them, she goes, you'll get repeat business from me. So I left those, and she called me back, like, not even two or three days later. She goes, hey, you got any more of those? Because I sold out, and I'll take what else do you got? So I said, well, I carry all kinds of fish.
I got goliath frogs.
No, at that time, I did not have glythroughs. This is like 1994.
I was this many.
Yeah, you were four. And Adam was probably in the land of make believe. I don't know how old I think.
I was back in the States then.
Were you back in the States? That's another story. This gal and her husband own this standalone pet store, and they were making money hand over fist. And I know this for a fact because she had said that, yeah, we're making like $4,000 profit a month just off this pet store. Her husband worked outside the pet store. The pet store was her baby. So she decided that she was going to move into the mall, and she had to go beg, plead and borrow to get into the mall. She wanted to get the mall to just have more traffic. Now, you go from a standalone pet store, which was paid for, by the way, and she wanted to go into the goddamn mall, which is very expensive. So she said, you know, I'm going to open up to have the grand opening on a Saturday. And she gave me an $1800 order, which was huge back then.
She goes, well, yeah, let's see. 94. That's like, a lot of money.
It was a lot of money. Yes.
I'm trying to remember what bread cost back then.
Yeah, nickel. So anyway, I wasn't gas, like ten cents.
Oh, my God.
Wow. No, you just fed hay to your horse when he pulled you down in your bug.
Oh, okay.
And so I go over there and and she says to me, can you bring it down on Friday because I'm having the grand opening on Saturday. She had like I said, she had really had to talk to mall and letting her in, and the mall made her you know when you go to the mall and they're closing at 09:00 at night, whatever, and they pull down the big gated doors. They wanted a glass sealed door because they wanted no odor into the make sense? They don't want to have any puppy smells into the mall. And so she paid like $4,000 at the time for this big heavy glass door. And so she says, can you meet me on a Friday morning? And I i take, I took off a day of work because I just did the, the district distribution part time. Took the day off of work and I went down and she goes, can you meet me at 07:00 a.m.? I go 07:00 in the morning, you're 3 hours downs from me. So that means I got to leave like at 04:00. So I get there right about five to seven and she told me which car she was driving. She had a little red sports car. I get there, there's three cars in the whole parking lot of this huge shopping mall. And I wait, and I wait, and I wait and went to the mall, banging on the door. And finally, after maybe 730, quarter eight, she came out of the mall. She goes oh, I've been waiting for you. I'm like, Well, I've been here for over freaking 30 minutes. And so she goes, well, just grab the fish and come on in. So I grabbed my two wheeler and I grabbed the first three or four boxes of fish. I'm very excited because I've already got the profit that I've made. I've already spent that money in my head three times on the way down. So I get down into the mall and stuff and she's going, yeah, I had to pay $4,000 for this glass door and stuff. And she goes, they're really picky. They don't want any smells in this house or in the mall. And I said, yeah, I totally understand it and stuff shows, but I plan on making bank here and stuff. She goes, I'm going to be here for a long, long time. I said okay. So anyway, as she opens the door, the most putrid smell of feces, dog poop, cat poop, rat poop comes wafting out from underneath this door. And as she opens this door outruns six or seven guinea pigs like they were shot out of a cannon. Guinea pigs, mice, rats, goliaths gerbils, puppies kitties, 4000, crickets all loose in the store.
It was like noah's ark.
Like somebody crash landed noah's ark onto a freaking island. And she opens this door and first the smell hits you and then this guinea pig comes shooting by you at 75 miles an hour. And you're going, what the heck? She turns on the light and you see every animal is loose in the store. I'm talking every single animal. She told me that she made a $1200 order just on reptiles and feeder, rats and mice and stuff. She had a huge store. And she goes, oh my God, help me catch these. So as you're trying to catch these guinea pigs and whatnot, as I'm trying to put them back into these cages, which I don't even know if they belong in these cages, I notice there is not a single lid on any of these cages. I'm thinking, what a stupid woman. She doesn't have any lids on any of these cages. How does she not.
Did someone ransack the place?
Yes.
They all vandalized the place and just let it all yes.
So when she turned on the light, it was like chaos. And I said there was cockatiels and parakeets and finches that flew out into the mall. Guinea pigs, rats, mice. The guys that were running the maintenance department, they came with brooms and kept sweep, keeping mice and rats back towards us so we could catch them and put them in tanks. But she had no tops. So you're trying to find a bag of dog food or something to put on top of them to keep them from coming out.
So how many hours were you doing this?
I was there till noon.
730 till noon.
Didn't sell her the fish.
You're running around like your heads chopped off catching shitty animals, and then you didn't sell your fish?
She goes, I don't know if the tank's safe. somebody's been in your ramsack the place. I don't know if the fish are safe, and blah, blah, blah. So I I help her, I load up the fish. I go home going, what the heck just happened? So I get a call from her three days later, and I'm thinking, oh, yeah, she's going to want these fish. She goes, I got kicked out of the mall.
I bet she did.
I said, we got kicked out of the mall. She goes, I got kicked out of the mall, I got fined, and I got to go back to my old store and bring me some fish the following week. And then that was the last time I ever heard from her. Now, fast forward two years. I'm in Orlando, Florida with my buddy Mark, and we are sitting at the Pet Expo in Orlando, Florida, and this really cute gal came up to me who I had no idea who she was. She goes, Excuse me? She goes, Where are you from? I said, we're from Minnesota. She goes, do you sell tropical fish? I go, yes, I do. I said, how did you know that? She goes, Just hold on. And so anyway, she walked away, and I'm looking at Mark and I'm going, this is kind of weird. And she walks up with this guy who I vaguely recognize but can't place him. And here it was, the woman from the pets from the mall. It was her ex husband ex husband. Ex husband, which was the husband and.
Now divorced over a mall situation.
Right? Okay, so now I hear the rest of the story.
Oh, boy. So it's like it's Sunday morning news. We should release this episode on Sunday.
Oh, man. This is the rest of the story.
The rest of the story.
So he comes over and introduces he goes, hey, are you from Minnesota? And I go, yeah, and this was his girlfriend that he sent over because I thought I recognized you and stuff. And he goes, we used to have so and so pet store. And then my wife moved to the mall. And I went, Holy crap. And he goes, Were you there the day that the pet store blew up? And I go actually, I was and.
He goes, I need to buy you a drink.
And he did. He said, Can I get you guys a beer? And they're selling beer there? And he said, yeah. So we almost sat in the corner. Here's the rest of the story. So this woman is having an affair with the guy at the mall who is like a general nutrition place where they sell all this stuff.
Well, of course, he's got to be physically fit.
Yeah. And so anyway, so apparently, she is having an affair with the guy across the hallway from the mall. And that's why she wanted to move to the mall. He caught wind of it, and he went in the night before the grand opening.
He took he did it.
He took all the lids with him.
Oh, my God.
Here's what he did to her. He knew that she was fooling around with a guy across the hall. He had said, don't move into the mall. It's not going to be good for our relationship. Because he knew what was going on. She had totally denied it. So he goes in there. She had taken all of her money because they had her money and his money. She had taken all her money, put it towards his pet store. He caught wind as she was fooling around with this guy. He went in there that night, and here's what he let out. And he told me, and he knew exactly what he let out. He let out 4000 crickets, 100 mice, 24 rats, ten or twelve guinea pigs, six or eight cockatiels, 25 inches.
I shouldn't laugh. It's terrible.
Canaries oh, man. Ball, pythons, all loose in the store. And when he left, he actually took a wire cutter, cut off all the doors of the bird cages. He took all the lids from the, you know, the top of the screens for the hamsters and stuff. He took them with him. He went, So here's what he told us. He goes, yeah, I did all that stuff to her because she had it coming. And he said, she got kicked out of the mall, like, a few days later, which I knew. And he says, So while you guys were cleaning that up, he says, I drained both of our bank accounts. I took every piece of furniture that we had put it. He goes, And I was in Arizona in 16 hours.
I bet he was.
And I'm just like, oh, man, this is unbelievable. But it was one of those deals where you had this confused, who would have done this? And now it totally makes total sense about what happened. And I just laughed my head off because it was like somebody shot a guinea pig out of. A cannon when that first door opened up.
I mean, a beer for 1800 hours of fish? I'm just saying he owes you.
Exactly. And I never did tell this goddamn fish to her. And she went out of business, and that's all he had known. But now he says, I have a buddy that still lives there in town. He goes, So after about six months, after this whole fiasco in there, he says, this made the news. They found a five and a half foot ball python roaming the mall that was fat and sassy. And he says, there's still there's he goes, they're still blaming her. He goes, here's the best part. He was only 18 inches when I let him go. So apparently we know that there's still some mice and rats left in that mall. Like I said, it made the local TV news. It made the local paper, and that was my goodness.
You kind of feel sorry for the.
Animals you got to.
It was a terrible thing.
And they never caught him. They just blamed her.
He was in Arizona in 16 hours.
Doesn't matter. But they do investigation. Like, who could have done it? There must have been cameras, I don't know, 94?
They didn't 94? Probably not. It was like I said, it was brand new. She probably didn't have cameras up. And it's over 20 years ago.
He's not going to get convicted now, right?
And the thing is that they had the keypad on the outside, and those were brand new at the time. And so, yeah, he let himself in and took all the so if you know, if your wife or husband is cheating on you, there's a little story for you.
There's no more slashing tires like some country songs just cut every top off of your pet store.
No, he took them home with them.
And take the tops with you.
Yeah, he just took them took them home and yeah, he he drained their bank account. He said, the only thing I left her left her with was her car. And I was thinking about getting that towed because I knew she'd be dizzy for a while, and she was because I was helping her until noon. Until noon. And sold nothing.
And sold nothing.
Yeah.
That's almost as good as the husband cheated on me sale.
So was that the best beer of your life?
You know what? Before he got done, he did buy several beers, and we actually did go out and have dinner with him and his wife on his tab. Yeah, he was remarried. Yeah, he took us out and you know Mark Adam, who owned a pet store up there in Bamidi and stuff, it was him and I and I just satisfied in my head. But it was one of those deals where, like, it's two years later and it's all put together. It's like a big, giant puzzle, and you're kind of going, I get it now.
I bet it made your memory a lot sweeter.
And I didn't even think about this story until you were going down to alexandria the other day and stuff. And it reminded me of that kind of down, that kind of feel. Yeah, it wasn't down in alexandria, but it was south of there. Yeah.
I think we need to end it on that one. It can't get better. There's no way I got nothing better than that. I got a couple of stories, but how about you, Adam?
I've got a couple, but we can end it.
We're going to call that one. The winner by unanimous decision is Jim colby.
Praise b. The flying cockatiels and the guinea pig cannon that he was shot out of. I've never seen a guinea pig come out of a pet store at 100 miles an hour in my life. What?
Hell, those snakes.
Jamie.
Oh, my God. I mean, this is the smell that wafted out of there. It was like going into a country music festival and coming out of the outhouse, and it's like, holy cow. Oh, boy. I don't know if she got her $4,000 door back or not.
Maybe that's all they gave her. They ripped off the door. So here's your momentum.
Probably lost her deposit, too. Oh, yeah. There's some stains on the carpet.
There's so much to take in. Well, guys, thanks again for tuning into this podcast. This has been an eye opening on all of us. If we do just a quick audit, we know that Jimmy has a fetish for frogs. I like to lick walmart. aquariums. And Adam, he likes to see something. So there's nothing else more to say other than please share this podcast with a friend and comment is back. You got questions on some of these stories? You want to have another story time in the future? Why am I even encouraging that? You don't want to have you need another one. All right, if you say so. We all have more stories, but submit your stories as well. We might be able to tell user story. Email us aquarium guys podcast is the website in the bottom. You'll find our email address, our phone number. If you want to tell us a story on recording or join us in discord. We have a great community, growing community. Certainly. Come join us. Anything else, guys?
That's all I got.
All right.
All I've got.
I'm going to go not go to a mall anytime soon.
All right.
Is that a mouse? No, that's a six foot python.
A six foot python that used to be 18 inches six months ago.
All right, let's kick that outro.
Thanks, guys, for listening to this podcast. Please visit us@aquariumguyspodcast.com and listen to us on spotify, iHeartRadio itunes and anywhere you can listen to podcasts.
We're practically everywhere. We're on Google. I mean, just go to your favorite place, pocket casts subscribe to make sure it gets push notifications directly to your phone. Otherwise Jim will be crying into sleep.
Can I listen to it in my treehouse?
In your tree house, in your fish room. Even alone at work?
What about my man cave?
Especially your man cave.
Yeah.
Only if adam's there no with feeder guppy.
No, they're nlertis you imagine loving Frank sucking mother?
Frank.
Well, I guess we'll see you next time. Later.