Bonus: Jail Birds

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[00:00:08] This is BewilderBeasts, an infotainment show dedicated to inspiring curiosity for all ages

[00:00:13] by investigating the ways animals intersect at humanity.

[00:00:17] I am not a historian, an ethologist, a researcher, a scientist, a zoologist, a trained audio engineer

[00:00:23] or an expert in... well... anything.

[00:00:26] Y'all, I'm lucky if I can remember to put my clean laundry in the dryer before

[00:00:30] it gets funky.

[00:00:31] And while I make every effort to present things as accurately as I can with a fun flair, I'm

[00:00:36] going to mess up.

[00:00:37] And that's okay.

[00:00:38] I hope I've given you a nice place to jump off from on your own adventures into curiosity

[00:00:42] or at the very least, I've given you the key to win your next round of trivia.

[00:01:08] Hello and welcome to BewilderBeasts.

[00:01:10] I'm your host Melissa McHugh McGrath recording from the laundry room.

[00:01:14] And on today's Patreon exclusive, let's talk jailbirds, shall we?

[00:01:18] Let's go!

[00:01:19] Hello everyone!

[00:01:35] It's your Patreon exclusive episode for July.

[00:01:39] Under the wire, I know, I know, I know.

[00:01:40] I was... kind of a big deal.

[00:01:43] I was tapped for doing a presentation for the Animal Behavior Society this month, which

[00:01:48] was kind of stressful but really fun.

[00:01:52] And I think I'm the only non-PhD presenting and I effectively had 10 days to pull

[00:01:57] together a whole presentation, record it and had to have it under time on a big topic

[00:02:03] in my industry.

[00:02:04] Stress!

[00:02:07] And I see the irony.

[00:02:08] And I wonder if you do too.

[00:02:10] I'll have to play some of this for you guys sometime.

[00:02:13] I ended up writing this thing and I recorded it and it was too long so I cut stuff.

[00:02:18] And it was still too long.

[00:02:19] And then I put it in my podcasting program and recorded it and I took out every

[00:02:23] um, every like, every awe, every inhale of breath, every pause over 2.5 seconds long and

[00:02:29] that took it from 28 minutes down to 21 minutes.

[00:02:35] But since I had to be under 20, I had to speed it up so it sounds like I took six

[00:02:40] shots of espresso, recorded the talk but it worked.

[00:02:42] I got it done.

[00:02:43] It was under 20 minutes.

[00:02:45] I also got a stress zit from it so for those listening fifth graders, your teacher

[00:02:51] is lying to you about zits going away as an adult.

[00:02:54] Y'all might get a kick out of this though.

[00:02:56] Maybe I'll post it after it airs for you.

[00:02:58] I don't know if it's something you're interested in.

[00:03:00] Um, I ended up effectively doing the assignment but I had to find a loophole to do it so

[00:03:04] kids let that be a lesson.

[00:03:07] Um, I also learned that I don't think I ever want to be an academic.

[00:03:11] I think I like to talk too much but once it's up again I'll consider sharing

[00:03:16] it if it's something that you're interested in or at least put it up on the Patreon

[00:03:20] feed and you guys can see if you want to listen to it.

[00:03:21] Do not feel obligated.

[00:03:23] Um, but if you have dogs in your life and you want to know how stress helps and hurts

[00:03:28] dogs and how we humans can help our distressed dogs, it could be a fun free

[00:03:32] presentation for you.

[00:03:34] And again, it's only 20 minutes so it's a short listen.

[00:03:37] Haha!

[00:03:38] Okay so with all that being said, that's how my summer's been going.

[00:03:41] I hope yours is going well.

[00:03:42] I hope you're doing okay in the heat.

[00:03:44] With everything on the table here we go.

[00:03:46] Let's just start this show.

[00:03:48] Ready?

[00:03:56] Okay it is 2001 in Lima, Ohio.

[00:04:02] I checked.

[00:04:03] It is Lima despite being spelled L-I-M-A.

[00:04:06] Ohio has interesting pronunciations.

[00:04:10] I know in the main episode I gave a lot of uh, nudge nudge wink wink jokes to some

[00:04:14] of the towns up here that we pronounce it callous instead of calay and bunch of

[00:04:18] other things here but Ohio also has Houston which is spelled like the famous Houston.

[00:04:25] It has Rushi spelled like Russia.

[00:04:28] Ver sales spelled like Versailles and the one that always messes me up still to this

[00:04:33] day is Medina, Ohio not Medina.

[00:04:38] So the Oakwood Forensic Center in Lima, Ohio is a maximum security prison for the

[00:04:43] criminally insane and they noticed something very unusual one day.

[00:04:48] The prisoners were super well cooperative and more social.

[00:04:54] All the things that when my nine year old is doing them I'm instantly suspicious.

[00:04:59] What do you want?

[00:05:02] But being a forensic center it's in the name they investigated and that's when

[00:05:07] they discovered that the prisoners had found a sick sparrow in the yard and

[00:05:11] with teamwork had nursed it back to health in secret.

[00:05:17] And as any good researcher would do the forensic center thought hey let's do an

[00:05:21] experiment. So the prisoners in Ward 1 the same word that they had the six

[00:05:25] sparrow in were allowed to keep pets for a year. The prisoners in the second

[00:05:29] ward were not allowed pets and over the course of 365 days data was

[00:05:34] collected and the prisoners in Ward 1 the pets allowed ward needed half the

[00:05:40] allotted medication and had significantly fewer violent outbursts than

[00:05:44] the prisoners in the no pets allowed ward. There were also fewer attempted

[00:05:49] and completed suicides in Ward 1.

[00:05:52] Okay okay okay well that's just one prison good science is repeatable right?

[00:05:57] Well there have been quite a few studies like the one conducted in Lorton

[00:06:01] Correctional Facility in Virginia those prisoners had less than a quarter of

[00:06:07] the national recidivism rate. Well what does that mean?

[00:06:10] Well that means if I were put in jail for robbing a bank I got out and

[00:06:15] then immediately robbed a bank again recidivism is like a relapse or back

[00:06:20] sliding or bank robbing. You did good you got out you went back to your old

[00:06:25] ways the prisoners at this jail had less than a quarter of the national

[00:06:30] recidivism rate and were less likely to reoffend. Now there are a lot of

[00:06:36] factors here correlation does not mean causation could it be that the crimes

[00:06:41] that landed these particular people in jail may have had a lower recidivism rate

[00:06:46] anyway or maybe there are only six people looked at in the study. I have no

[00:06:50] idea I only read an article but I do know that a decade after the Sixth

[00:06:55] Barrow incident in Weimar residence of Gig Harbor in Washington state the

[00:07:00] self-proclaimed chicken lady decided to try something that most would

[00:07:04] consider unusual maybe even birdbrained. Paula Andrew the aforementioned

[00:07:10] chicken lady was the human resources consultant for the Washington

[00:07:13] Corrections Center for Women W.C.C.W. but she thought what if she could bring

[00:07:18] chickens to the prison yard it can be hard to convince a parent or a life

[00:07:22] partner that you just want to bring in more animals to a living space but I

[00:07:26] am guessing it is infinitely more difficult to convince a prison warden

[00:07:30] that pretty please we'll take care of them feed them water them take them

[00:07:35] walks you won't have to do any of the work Pinkie Pie promise is just way harder

[00:07:42] I don't know what she did or what language she used but she was able to convince the

[00:07:47] powers that be by working with the sustainability and prisons project

[00:07:50] to get two coops on wheels also called chicken tractors I have two of them

[00:07:56] they're great well one of them is great the other is a pain to move but

[00:08:00] that's not part of the story in theory you should be able to move

[00:08:03] these chicken tractors around and keep the birds contained they're safe from

[00:08:06] predators you can put them where you need them to work the soil move at the

[00:08:09] next day or the next week and these birds were brought in from a nearby farm

[00:08:14] in 2015 the chicken poop effectively fertilized the

[00:08:17] gardens of the prison which went on to grow food for local food banks and

[00:08:21] help feed the prisoners ha-zah sustainability but Paula was not

[00:08:26] satisfied with just tilling the soil with 12 walking

[00:08:29] rototillers who pooped out breakfast Paula did what two-thirds of the people in

[00:08:33] the backyard chicken group that I followed probably did

[00:08:36] she saw a photo of a cute chicken in a sweater vest and thought

[00:08:39] haha aw yes Paula isn't just a superstar in the prison system

[00:08:45] Paula isn't just the chicken lady she's also a self-taught knitter

[00:08:49] and given the inmates at this prison have been concerned about the

[00:08:51] chickens in the winter and mud season approaching Paula had an idea

[00:08:55] many of the women in this prison also happen to be skilled in the fiber

[00:08:59] arts you've got your knitters your quilters your

[00:09:02] crocheters everything in fact many of these inmates while

[00:09:06] incarcerated produced hats and scarves and blankets for charities around

[00:09:10] the world Paula talked to the recreation specialist

[00:09:14] Carrie Hesch and when they asked the prisoners if they would entertain

[00:09:18] making sweater vests for chickens they were all

[00:09:21] in I mean they were all in after first cackling and thinking this was

[00:09:25] ridiculous but when they all leaned in they even nitted little slogans on the

[00:09:29] hens vests like WCCW crew and jailbird the inmates made a prototype

[00:09:36] of the vest which was admittedly a bit large but

[00:09:39] every flock has one big mama and this prototype did fit one hen in the

[00:09:43] henatentury named Peppa so let's go across the pond if

[00:09:48] we're going to be looking at more animals who have helped inmates

[00:09:51] and I'm also going to find out in a couple weeks how much the people in

[00:09:54] the UK love or hate the phrase across the pond sorry maybe I don't know in 2019

[00:10:00] endorse it where one prison adopted 150 laying hens from the British

[00:10:05] Hen welfare trust you see it's quite in vogue right

[00:10:09] now to rescue what's called battery hens or in the United States we would call

[00:10:13] them factory hens after they stop laying eggs in the life of a

[00:10:18] laying chicken which is a horrible life they lay the most eggs in their first

[00:10:23] year unless you are our chicken who's named egg

[00:10:26] who has laid exactly three eggs girl you're freeloading and I would love if you

[00:10:32] could start pulling your weight but anyway after a laying hen hits the age of

[00:10:36] two sometimes three many backyard chicken owners will

[00:10:41] slaughter their hens to get more egg laying hens in the flock

[00:10:45] and because they're responsible they will use all the parts of the bird

[00:10:48] they will go into homemade chicken products and you actually know where your

[00:10:53] meat came from and that they were taken care of for their life

[00:10:56] however in factory farming or battery hens

[00:11:00] they will be slaughtered at 18 months of age after their super prime laying time

[00:11:07] as they need to maximize the amount of eggs that are produced for eggs in

[00:11:11] stores and products and baked goods and more

[00:11:14] then their dark barn is cleaned out where they were all living in

[00:11:19] they give it a couple weeks as a quarantine situation and then they bring

[00:11:22] in several hundred new pellets or newly laying hens to repeat the process

[00:11:28] in another 18 months or you could just do what we're committed to doing

[00:11:33] once they live with us they will live out their natural lives with us

[00:11:37] scratching at grass eating ticks and making us laugh

[00:11:40] but hens can live to eight or nine or ten or 18

[00:11:45] though uncommon don't worry about a babe it's fine but it's not like

[00:11:48] on their third birthday they switch a switch and then they stop laying 150

[00:11:52] eggs a year they just slow down to maybe two

[00:11:56] eggs a week it's still better than our dud chicken who's

[00:11:59] laid only three in three months but i'm not worried about it

[00:12:02] uh come on egg she would not have done well at a battery farm for sure

[00:12:06] so back to dorset right they get their laying hens from a former

[00:12:10] commercial laying operation and for the first time these chickens got to

[00:12:15] touch grass with their little freaky deaky feet

[00:12:17] they went to guys marsh guys marsh is not a nature preserve

[00:12:22] it is a category c prison holding up to 450 men

[00:12:26] some whom have committed serious crimes what's a cat c prison well category a

[00:12:32] or the magnitos or the ted bundies they are the most dangerous and will

[00:12:36] very likely try to escape if given any opportunity

[00:12:40] cat c prisons house prisoners who are not trusted in open conditions

[00:12:44] but are unlikely going to escape so ironically the newly freed birds went

[00:12:51] to prison how did the chickens get to jail

[00:12:55] wane walters enters the chat he's been with the prison for 14 years

[00:12:59] and after working in the prison wings uh-huh containing dangerous men wane

[00:13:04] walters wanted to switch it up a bit prison shouldn't be about keeping people

[00:13:08] down and stripping them of all hope wane walters wanted these men to cope with

[00:13:13] life inside prison and prepare them for rehabilitation

[00:13:17] after their release and since there are so few chicken puns that tie into jail

[00:13:22] project jail bird was ago the birds who were slated for slaughter got a

[00:13:26] fresh start at this jail and the prisoners got to create a bird

[00:13:29] sanctuary for their new bird friends in fact a prisoner who could

[00:13:34] not be legally named because privacy he just went by prisoner jay in the

[00:13:40] article teamed up with wane walters and they went to work to turn an unused

[00:13:45] part of the prison into a henatentury the funny thing is between prisoner jay

[00:13:51] and wane walters neither had carpentry skills but they sorted it out

[00:13:56] they ended up making flower boxes with other prisoners

[00:13:59] they made coups and when everything was ready for the ladies they brought in

[00:14:03] 49 x battery hens and if you have chickens the very first thing they tell

[00:14:08] you is chicken math is real you get 49 but then you want 150 more which is

[00:14:13] exactly what happened in this jail once they realized how well the former

[00:14:19] imprisoned hens were doing in their new digs stretching walking keeping the

[00:14:22] bugs away and yes pooping out breakfast the men were doing so much

[00:14:27] better too and it wasn't long before they had to build more coups and find more

[00:14:31] space but they were able to bring in 150 more hens

[00:14:37] jane ho worth the founder of the british head and welfare trust

[00:14:41] personally delivered these x battery hens

[00:14:44] two guys marsh and what she said was what really struck me was the effort

[00:14:49] that both wane and prisoner jay had put into project jailbird

[00:14:53] they have created a fantastic facility for hens out of wasted space

[00:14:56] and in doing so they have given the prisoners at guys marsh the opportunity

[00:15:00] to learn new skills and of course give the hens a wonderful new second chance

[00:15:04] at life the charity has supplied hens to almost

[00:15:07] a dozen prisons across the uk and i wholeheartedly support

[00:15:11] wane's initiative seeing only benefit enrolling out the model across

[00:15:16] all uk prisons go get it jane ho worth

[00:15:20] chickens in scotland are also donating their eggs to cooking programs to help

[00:15:24] inmates get work after serving their time and y'all it's not even just chickens

[00:15:30] if i said the phrase prison animal programs

[00:15:33] many might jump to just dogs and that is the most common

[00:15:36] but prisons across the united states are giving their inmates opportunities

[00:15:40] for handling all sorts of animals there are of course the chicken programs

[00:15:44] with and without vests service dog programs

[00:15:48] also with and without vests but one new orleans facility has an aquaculture

[00:15:52] program on a rooftop and a former football field

[00:15:56] which i guess was for security guards but is now for fish

[00:15:59] in fact that program produces tilapia that was served

[00:16:03] twice a month on the prisoner's menu farming isn't just on land y'all

[00:16:08] it's also including fish farming i came across a wild horse program in

[00:16:14] arizona and in colorado check this the federal bureau of land management

[00:16:19] blm has oversight over all of america's wild horses and that's a very good thing

[00:16:26] but given that the government protection has worked and worked

[00:16:29] remarkably well the population of wild horses has skyrocketed which is so

[00:16:34] cool but to keep the numbers stabilized stable

[00:16:37] hey they often capture and adopt lb's wild

[00:16:42] they have to be conditioned to being a team

[00:16:45] horse though so how do you get from wild mustang to team

[00:16:49] adoptable horse well there's this program called whip

[00:16:53] ick i hate it but it stands for wild horse

[00:16:57] inmate program this is a program created when the arizona department of

[00:17:01] corrections and the colorado correctional industries teamed up

[00:17:04] with the bureau of land management and professional horse

[00:17:07] trainers these guys all teach inmates how to train

[00:17:11] horses that are put up for adoption i would personally

[00:17:15] love to look into how they train these horses and make sure that they're

[00:17:19] using sound and kind techniques and not using

[00:17:22] whips as the name may suggest but speaking of wild animals

[00:17:26] in data massachusetts an unusual program is afforded to inmates

[00:17:31] they are able to rehabilitate wild animals in need at the new england

[00:17:36] wildlife center prisoners could care for sick and injured foxes

[00:17:40] raccoons birds and more one of my favorite options was the k9

[00:17:44] performance sciences program at auburn university's college of veterinary

[00:17:48] medicine this program breeds and trains dogs to

[00:17:51] find bombs in viruses hey that's timely poison pretty much

[00:17:56] anything you can think of that would just be you know no good very bad stuff

[00:17:59] to people the selected puppies are sent for six

[00:18:02] months to a florida prison or georgia if they're into peaches

[00:18:05] for the basics like socialization sit down stay

[00:18:09] good god don't eat that even basic tracking skills

[00:18:13] and on the other side of the coin prisoners who are selected for the

[00:18:16] program and earn a spot get to have a puppy for six months

[00:18:21] i think that's the best perk but they also get educational credits

[00:18:24] from auburn university the puppies go back for more cent

[00:18:28] work training and those dogs go on to work as

[00:18:31] according to the article security experts

[00:18:34] which is pretty on the nose given that they started in prison

[00:18:38] some of these very good girls and boys go on to do research as well but not

[00:18:42] research in the lab animal way that you may be picturing

[00:18:45] these dogs went on to lay very very very still in an fmri machine

[00:18:53] this is a special machine that can read your brain activity when exposed

[00:18:57] to things like smells and sounds

[00:19:00] i cannot do this as a human to sit still for that long so these dogs

[00:19:04] brains are able to be scanned in this fmri machine they have to sit

[00:19:08] very still and i get to use some of these dogs

[00:19:12] data and information in scent presentations when i talk to kids about

[00:19:15] how freaking cool dogs noses and brains are

[00:19:19] thank you dogs and prisoners and because wild animals weren't hard

[00:19:24] enough there's a cat program unadoptable kitties due to

[00:19:29] behavior issues were sent to large correctional facility instead of

[00:19:32] being euthanized the idea here was that these abused and

[00:19:36] neglected cats and maybe some of them were even just feral

[00:19:40] just needed to learn how to live with humans inmates who qualified for the

[00:19:45] program were able to keep a cat with them at all times and had litter

[00:19:48] boxes and scratching posts in their rooms and they spent one on one time with

[00:19:51] these cats helping them to overcome their fear of people

[00:19:55] and sometimes they even got to care for newborn kittens who needed

[00:19:59] around the clock care many of these cats after all of the care and

[00:20:03] attention given from the inmates were actually able to be adopted

[00:20:08] and now that program has relocated from the correctional center to the humane

[00:20:12] society but larch is still running a dog program now

[00:20:16] in fact all washington state prisons run some kind of animal training

[00:20:20] or adoption program i just really hope that they

[00:20:23] keep the cat programs away from the chicken programs

[00:20:35] so thank you for joining me today i'll be wilderbees patreon exclusive

[00:20:39] thank you so much for supporting this show

[00:20:43] so i'm thinking about maybe making a boulder beast hat or something so if

[00:20:47] there's a hat or a tank top or sweatshirt or something that you'd like

[00:20:50] let me know i'm gonna use my time in the sky flying to and from scotland

[00:20:54] next month doing a little research for the show while i'm there

[00:20:57] mocking up some things and writing some scripts for next season

[00:21:00] so if you have ideas for the show or for design or for

[00:21:04] a piece of apparel that you would like let me know

[00:21:07] you know how to find me at be wilderbeespod.com be wildered pod on twitter

[00:21:12] just use the patreon thing send me a note you know how this works

[00:21:15] uh so thanks again y'all mwah and there's going to be some very

[00:21:19] interesting resources for today's episode because i was actually thinking

[00:21:22] about doing a story on the bird man of alcatraz because he kept popping up

[00:21:26] in my story in my resources as i was

[00:21:29] checking things out and i was looking at a bunch of prison statistics as well

[00:21:34] i'm going to keep those resources in the episode even though that is not the

[00:21:38] direction that i took i think that knowing the statistics of

[00:21:42] prisons and jails and incarceration rates and the role of racism and

[00:21:47] marginalized groups in prison and how these people are treated that are

[00:21:50] very different than the way that people who look like me are treated in jail

[00:21:54] um i think that's very important information so i'm going to keep some

[00:21:57] of those resources in there even though i did not end up going in that

[00:22:00] direction for today's episode um if you have any questions concerns or

[00:22:05] comments let me know i got today's information from the dodo.com the

[00:22:11] guardian.com bbc.com washington gov news on the chicken

[00:22:16] sweaters southwest farmer.co.uk and bhwt that is the

[00:22:23] british hen welfare trust.org.uk medium.com

[00:22:30] and prison policy.org intro and outro music is tiptoe out the back by danlie

[00:22:35] bowitt's interstitial music by mk2 all episodes you know how this works

[00:22:40] you can find on the website bewilderbeespot.com reach out however you

[00:22:44] like although carrier pigeons seem mighty

[00:22:46] appropriate so don't forget to stay curious send me your favorite

[00:22:50] animal stories and i will see you next time

[00:22:56] my clockers bringing all the chicks to the yard doot doot doot doot doot

[00:23:00] alright i don't want to get sued

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