Hey there, friends, and welcome to Just the Zoo of Us. We here at the Weatherford home are super busy bees this time of year between traveling to see family and preparing for the holidays. So this week I am bringing back a festive episode from two years ago. This is episode 79 in which I spoke with my friend, Ecologist and Science Communicator

Olivia DeBersier about reindeer. Before we get into it, super quick. If you are looking for

something new to listen to, I recommend heading over to the Pangolin podcast for the holiday

special that I had the pleasure of being part of. Longtime listeners

of our show will recognize the voices of Jack Baker from our Pangolin episode, Vikram Beliga

from our Plants episode, and Ashley Bray from our Great Horned Owl episode. We got together to talk

about conservation success stories from this year and have a

very fun and festive chat about nature. It was hilarious and delightful and uplifting.

And here is a clip from the show to give you a little peek under the tree. This is part of the

conversation in which we were asked

what animals or plants we would like to add to the suite of Christmas traditions.

New, neat tree things to bring into Christmas. Yes. I think alternatively from Ellen's idea,

I would like to bring raccoons in. But I would like to bring raccoons in similar to elf on the shelf

where they steal things and mess up your Christmas decorations. I love that.

They got little hands for messing stuff up. Oh my gosh. And they've got like the built in

little burglar masks and like, yes. Nailed it. Very mischievous. Yeah. That's it.

You could like, get them a little.

You could do that thing where you like, instead of leaving an actual physical like doll in the position, you could leave little like paw prints. Like do like little stamps of paw prints around. I thought you were going to say real raccoons. Instead of the fake things, bring a lie raccoon. just a real raccoon

in your house.

Merry Christmas.

It gets

a bunch of raccoons.

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