The final frog of our series is the newly discovered zombie frog! Learn all about it from Moss. 

Peep talks about the striped rocket frog!

Frogs have some interesting ways to get oxygen and Curt tells us all about it!

Moss tells us all about the Tapir Valley Tree Frog!

Moss introduces us to Wallace's flying frog! 

Peep tells you all about the crazy peepin' desert rain frog!

Part 3 of 4 of our chats with Henry the Herpetologist from the Lincoln Park Zoo!

What does the Red-Eyed Tree Frog have to do with the video game, Frogger? Come on along and find out!

Curt tells us all about the frog so nice they named it twice!

Megan tells us all about the troubles of the pumpkin toadlet.

Curt tells us all about the Budgett's Frog!

This episode is about THE PHANTASMAL POISON FROG. And it's with Megan Danger. Listen to it now!

Join Megan for a paean of praise in honor of the redoubtable, remarkable resident of leafy litter and loamy loam, the long-nosed frog!

In your face, Wood Frog, the Crab Eating Frog also has a super power! 

Curt tells us about a species of frog with a superpower!

Curt tells us about the hpppenin' Indian Purple Frog!

Hop around with Donna to talk about the ittiest bittiest frog in the whole ding dang world!

Join Curt for a little Colorado chat about our native Red Spotted Toad!

Part two!

Moss teaches us about the American Green Tree Frog!

Curt tells us all about the mighty Goliath frog.

Join Moss to learn about the lovely Surinam Toad!

Warning: Trypaphobia people might not want to look up pics of this one.

Come hang out with Curtis and learn about Diane's Bare-Hearted Glass Frog! 

Learn about the Mossy Frog with Moss!

It's a Frog A Day for NaPodPoMo! Picture credit: By Andreas Schlüter - http://calphotos.berkeley.edu, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6767969

Part one of a four part series of interviews with Henry Adams from the Lincoln Park Zoo's Urban Wildlife Institute! The first show of our month long shows about frogs, A Frog a Day for National Podcast Posting Month.

Join Donna, Curt, and Moss for a sheep chat with Bill from Smiling Dog Farm! dog-farm.com/">https://www.smiling-dog-farm.com/

Varmints returns to the fold with a big, wooly episode. Join Donna, Curtis, Megan, and Moss and frolick like a lamb in springtime while you learn about domestic sheep!

Varmints Update with Donna, Curt, Moss and Megan.  See you soon!

Listen to the musings of Cotton Shorts about day-to-day doings on the esoteric animal ranch. 

The first full length episode for Varmints! 2.0, we jump right in and learn about pronghorn!  Featured image is from the National Parks Service.

Come and meet new Varmints! cohost, Curtis Craddock!

Come get to know Megan Danger, a new cohost on Varmints! 2.0.

Join us for an interview with one of the three new Varmints! Podcast cohosts, Moss, also known as the Science Dude. 

Chad from the PodFix Network interviews Donna about what is next for Varmints! Podcast.

Back in 2017 when our podcast was still very new, we did an episode on Hippos!

This episode featured the lovely and charming baby hippo, Fiona from the Cincinnati Zoo. 

As a celebration of her 5th birthday, we're republishing that episode!

Enjoy!

And Happy Birthday, Fiona, from the Varmints! Podcast and all our loyal listeners, the Varminions. We hope your day was super special! 

Picture of Fiona credit goes to:

DarthBotto, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Learn about spiders a bit each day with Donna and Paul.

Learn about spiders in little bits each day from Donna and Paul.

Learn about spiders in little bits each day with Donna and Paul.

Today is Part Two of a surprise phone call from our special guest, Cotton Shorts, who is an Exotic Animal Rancher. Cotton ordinarily, (or perhaps extraordinarily), joins us on our April 1st episodes. Today some giant spiders have invaded his ranch and Donna does her best to explain them. 

Learn about spiders in little bits each day with Donna and Paul.

Today our special guest is Cotton Shorts, Exotic Animal Rancher who ordinarily, (or perhaps extraordinarily), joins us on our April 1st episodes. Today some giant spiders have invaded his ranch and Donna does her best to explain them. 

Learn about spiders in little bits each day with Donna and Paul.

Today's special spider guest is the banana spider! 

Learn about spiders in little bits each day with Paul and Donna.

Today's special guest is Tea, from ScienTEAfic with tips on how to figure out if a web is still occupied. 

Learn about spiders in little bits each day with Paul and Donna.

Today's special guest is Tea, from ScienTEAfic, letting us know why spiders sometimes land on us. Whoops!

Learn all about spiders in little tidbits each day from Varmints! Podcast cohosts Donna Hume and Paul Csomo.

Learn all about spiders in little tidbits each day from Varmints! Podcast cohosts Donna Hume and Paul Csomo.

Learn all about spiders in little tidbits each day from Varmints! Podcast cohosts Donna Hume and Paul Csomo.

Learn all about spiders in little tidbits each day from Varmints! Podcast cohosts Donna Hume and Paul Csomo.

Learn all about spiders in little tidbits each day from Varmints! Podcast cohosts Donna Hume and Paul Csomo.

Learn all about spiders in little tidbits each day from Varmints! Podcast cohosts Donna Hume and Paul Csomo.

Learn all about spiders in little tidbits each day from Varmints! Podcast cohosts Donna Hume and Paul Csomo.

Learn all about spiders in little tidbits each day from Varmints! Podcast cohost Donna Hume. 

Learn all about spiders in little tidbits each day from Varmints! Podcast cohost Donna Hume. 

Learn all about spiders in little tidbits each day from Varmints! Podcast cohost Donna Hume. 

https://www.treehugger.com/facts-about-misunderstood-house-spider-4868827

Learn all about spiders in little tidbits each day from Varmints! Podcast cohost Donna Hume.  Today: Donna sent Paul on a mission to find out what kind of spiders he had in and around his home, and report! These are the results.

Learn all about spiders in little tidbits each day from Varmints! Podcast cohost Donna Hume.  Today: The Black Widow Spider

Hey everyone! It's your buddy Paul.

You may have noticed that there has been no episodes lately and if you don't follow us on Twitter or Facebook you might not know why so here I am to tell you.

Back on September 3rd I found out that my someone at my day job tested positive for COVID-19. The next day I also tested positive for COVID-19. I had a breakthrough infection which means that I was fully vaccinated at the end of April and got sick anyway. Which is fine. I knew that was a possibility. There are nine employees at my job and seven of us tested positive and one employee's wife tested positive as well and we are all dealing with varying degrees of symptoms. I am happy to tell you that as of this morning, September 16th, I am about 85% healthy, I tested negative for COVID-19 and even though I had some pretty rough days and nights I think the vaccine did its job and kept my symptoms mild enough that I could stay here at home in almost total isolation for 10 days. I think in ten days I left my room for six hours maybe? For walks outside and going to the pharmacy to get tested. Lots of cotton swabs in my nose there for a while. Anyway I have no doubt that if I hadn't been vaccinated that this would have been much, much worse. So if you haven't been vaccinated already please go do that. I told people that I'm glad that instead of Original Recipe Covid that I had Diet Covid instead. It's no fun. It's not like any cold or flu you've ever had. Losing your senses of taste and smell is one of the most bizarre things I've ever experienced. 0/5 stars on Travel Advisor. Do not recommend.

I decided shortly after I tested positive that I would take the month of September off as far as podcasting and even though I'm feeling much better I still have a lot of fatigue and I can't talk that much which is pretty important if the content you create involves talking into a microphone for an hour or more at a time. My voice gives out. My hope is that we can publish the second part of our episode about pigeons and doves sometime in October. I don't know when because we haven't recorded it yet. And we have other episodes planned after that but I just need to get a little more healthy.

We are going to do our second annual Fat Bear Week tournament in the Varmints Discussion Group on Facebook. The Katmai National Park does a Fat Bear Week tournament and in the group we play along and we give the winners of the tournament prizes and it's a lot of fun. You'll hear trailers for that in the next couple of weeks but if you're on Facebook look us up. It's the Varmints Discussion Group. We ask you a couple of questions about the show. And it's just a nice, positive group where we share funny animal memes and news stories and I hope you check it out. The Fat Bear Week Tournament starts on September 29th and we'll remind you about it next week.

It's also time for the Discover Pods awards! We won the award for Best Kids and Family podcast a couple of years ago and it would be cool to do that again. You can go to awards.discoverpods.com and nominate us for Best Kids and Family. It's super easy and that would be amazing.

If you are a Patreon supporter first of all thanks for your support. We're not going to bill you on October 1st. You're getting a free month which means that if you join our Patreon now you'll get all of the bonus content and you won't be billed until November 1st. If you've been kicking the idea around of helping the show through Patreon it's a great time to do that.

I'll put the links to everything I've talked about here in the show notes. And that's it. I'm really looking forward to giving you a proper show in the next month or so but I'm not 100% and I'm probably going to go lay down after I publish this so thanks for listening. Thanks for all of your support. Thanks for your patience. Just thanks. Until we talk again, be nice to animals. Take care.

Links:

Paul's segment on the Livestream for the Cure telethon for cancer research recorded on May 21, 2012. Edited for time and content.  Please be advised that this episode has mild and bleeped swearing and a little bit of adult subject matter and may not be suitable for very young children.

Please join me for my segment on the Livestream for the Cure this year! It starts at 4PM EST on Friday May 21, 2021 at

https://twitch.tv/livestreamforthecure

Please join me for some fun and help us raise $15K for cancer research this year!

Seems like a good day to put 15 minutes of complete nonsense out there. The funny kind of nonsense. Not the scary kind of nonsense. This is for you, April.

Today's show is not about an animal, but we've had a number of requests over the years to talk about it, so we're going to give it a go!

Donna had a chat with two scientists about this topic and gave them a few of the questions from our discussion group, and it ended up being a great conversation.

Joining Donna were Dr. Seth Magle, is the Director of the Urban Wildlife Institute at the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago, and Dr. Tobin Magle, who is the Research Data Lifecycle Manager in the Division of Information Technology at UW-Madison. 

The image attached to this episode is available in the Public Domain, can be found at the CDC's website, and was generated by Hannah A Bullock; Azaibi Tamin.

We hope you enjoy the episode.

This episode was brought to you with technical support by Matthew Csomo. Our bed music is by Kevin MacLeod, our logo was created by Imran Javed and our vocal talent was Justine and Santiago and Curtis Craddock.