Hello, my friends, and welcome to episode 128 of Just the Zoo of Us.

On this week's episode, I got to talk with a conservation biologist about the little furry

critters tunneling through the grasslands, ground squirrels.

We talk about the hazards of fieldwork, sleeping your problems away, the science of spluding,

jujitsu matches, tippy taps,

and furry little neighborhood watch programs.

It is a wild ride through the hidden world of these burrowing rodents.

Just the Zoo of Us presents Ground Squirrels with Stephanie Martinez. Hey, everybody. This is Ellen Weatherford. I'm here as usual with Just the Zoo of Us,

your favorite animal review podcast.

And this week, I'm excited and I know y'all are excited to talk to our friend Stephanie Martina's. Say hi, Stephanie.

Hello.

I'm so hyped to talk to you because we've been buds on social media for a while.

So it's really exciting to get to see your face.

Yeah, I'm real. And today we're talking about ground squirrels, which is really neat because I think that

if you live in the type of area that I live in, which is kind of like a suburban area,

you might not even realize that there are multiple types of squirrels.

Do you run into this a lot where people are like, oh, there's more than one squirrel? Oh, yeah. There's several times where people are like, what's a ground squirrel? And it's just like, oh, no, I have so much to talk to you about. Sit down, sit down. I know. It's like you're going to love this. So we're going to do a deep dive into the world of ground squirrels today. Before we do that, let's get to know you a little bit.

What has your squirrel journey been like?

Like, how did you get into working with and being interested in squirrels?

Oh, man, my squirrel story.

So let's see here.

I always knew that I wanted to do something with animals wildlife.

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