Welcome to the Maine Farmcast. I am your host, Dr. Colt Knight, associate extension professor, state livestock specialist for the University of Maine Cooperative Extension. Today, I'm joined again by Dr. Gregg Rentfrow. It's you know, as we're recording these, it seems abundant that we have so many Yeah. Episodes.

But that's because when they come to visit, I try to get three or four episodes recorded. And then we spread them out over the years. And then, it it always sometimes we we mention things like the weather or time of year, and it's really out of sync when we release these episodes. But Doctor. Renfro and I were just sitting here swapping stories.

And I was thinking, you know, sometimes in extension, we get some really cool stories or growing up where we did, we've got some really cool stories. And I told him, we need to record some of those.

And I said, let's do it. Let's do it.

And he said, we got twenty minutes. Let's kick this pig. Let's do it. And one of the stories that he's hold me over the years that I always think is, is just a great university slash extension story is the story about the brain in the trash can. Yeah.

Yeah. So, you know, when you get into this, you become a, especially when you're at the specialist level, you really never know where life's gonna lead you. And I'll never forget one Friday afternoon, I'm sitting in my office. And so my Friday afternoons where I sit in my office, I do some work and then usually around 04:00, I meet my training partner, we go to the gym, we lift weights. And it was about 03:00 or so and my phone rings.

And it had Fayette County. So Lexington is in Fayette County. And if when you're from the South, you're not you're from a county. So you rarely see Lexington Health Department. It's usually Fayette County Health Department or something like that.

And it was a coroner's office that called me up. And the the county coroner is saying, hey, this is so and so, doctor Rentfrow, would you mind coming down? I'm sitting in your meat lab, Doc. I have a brain that we need to identify. Like brain.

So I go downstairs and there sets the county coroner and he's got this brain. And he said, did this come from your lab? And I said, no. It's too big. He said, we thought maybe it was a beef brain.

And for folks at home that don't know what we're talking about, this brain was about the size, a little bit bigger than a softball. And all of

our livestock species have brains, tennis ball,

Tennis horse ball, yard, lemon, you know, I mean, cattle. That's what always fascinates me about cattle is their control, like fifteen, sixteen, 1,700 pound animal is controlled by a brain about the size of your fist. And so we're looking at it. I said, no, it didn't come from us. The brain's just way too big for us.

And I was quizzing him about it. And he said, where'd you where I said, where'd you find this thing at? And he said, it was in a dumpster behind a church. Like what? What the world's going on at church?

Well, and he says, we don't think it's human because he was describing the anatomy of the human brain to me and it didn't fit that. Well, long story short, he calls me up a few weeks later, he says we figured out what it was. And what had happened was a local high school got online, ordered some primate monkey brains, and didn't know how to dispose of them after class. So the teacher drove around and found dumpsters and threw them in dumpsters. And nobody noticed except for this one church.

Their dumpster was empty and they threw it in there. And then the guy, the custodian went out there and there's this brain. Lot of it.

Someone watched way too many serial killer TV shows or something.

Too much NCIS and, you know, CSI and all that fun It's

very Dexter like.

Very Dexter like. But I could I can't imagine, you know, how do you explain that if you get stopped by the police? You know, it's like one time I'll never forget, when I was in grad school at Missouri, and my mother loves to retell this story. We had a big project. We're killing cattle or killing pigs.

I'm sorry. And I was doing the stunning and sticking. So I was covered in blood. And I get home and I'm like, well, I can go take a shower, but I gotta mow the yard. And so I decided I'm already dirty and I just left my kill floor clothes on.

And my wife comes home, she says, what are gonna do about dinner? Said just order pizza. So what she ended up doing, and this dates us, Colt, it really does. She instead of dialing 411 for information to get the phone number, she accidentally dialed 911 and hung the phone up.

They don't like that.

They don't like that. Well, in the meantime, she leaves to go get the pizza. And all the I had no idea what was going on. And here comes a police car pulling up with these lights on. And he gets out and he sees me mowing and he sees me covered in blood.

And he said, we had a dropped 911 call from this house. And I and it clicked in my head. I said, oh, my wife, I bet she accidentally dialed 911 when she was trying to get the phone number for the pizza. And then all of a sudden, he steps two takes two steps back and looks at me and I'm covered in blood. And he goes, where's your wife?

Like, holy smokes, she went to go get the pizza. He stayed there until she came with that pizza to get me out of Hawkeye. But you know, trade stories there. You know, I'm up here for a meat cutting school and what which a lot of folks may or may not know, Colt's from West Virginia. Colt got into academia because he decided not to be a coal miner.

But in West Virginia, we have or you have, we have them in Kentucky as well. We have these three, four, 500 pound raccoons known as black bears. You had a really cool black bear story I've always loved.

I've got this picture, and it's me standing there in my my mining hard hat and a greasy shirt standing in front of a truck Yeah. With a black bear sitting on top of the truck eating a Twinkie. And everybody always wants to know the story behind that picture. And so I was working in a coal mine on top of a mountain in Twilight, West Virginia. It was the progress mine.

We were building a dragline, and there was a little parking lot. We would all go park in that parking lot, And they brought us to the site in a school bus, basically. And, there was this this little bear that kept coming around. It was a real menace. People kept feeding him.

So he kept Yeah. Coming And I remember I had a little car at that time. And I pulled into the parking spot. I got out of the car, I stood up. And you know, it's it's mining world.

So I had my lunch bucket in one hand. And I just happened to look up. As I looked up, this bear looked down at me, and we just like crossed eyes. And then he looked at me, and he looked at my lunch bucket. And then I said, Oh, I know what he wants.

So I reached What's

the lunch bucket?

I reached into my lunch bucket, the first thing I could grab was that Twinkie. And my thought was, I'm going to take this Twinkie, and I'm going to throw it way off into the weeds, and that bear is going to go chase the Twinkie, and then I will be out of proximity of the bear. But what happened, bears look very clumsy

They do.

Just walking around and whatnot. And that bear had cat like reflexes, and he snatched that Twinkie before it made it a half inch out of my hand when I went to throw it. And then he just ripped it open and just started eating it right

there on top

of the truck. And one of the the other folks we worked with had one of those little disposable cameras. And I yelled at him. Was like, Hey, get my picture. While, the bear's distracted.

So I stood there and I got my my picture taken with the bear eating a Twinkie. But the funny part of this story is the guy that owned the truck, we called him Texas Steve. I don't think he was from Texas, but I'm pretty sure his name was Steve. I'm not a 100% sure. He just got that name because he wore those pearl snap Wrangler welding shirts.

And

Steve thought it would be cool. To get his picture with the bear too. And so he just started feeding him everything he had in his lunchbox,

which is not what he

had a Pepsi and the bear was drinking the Pepsi and he just gave him all that food, which worked out well until he ran out of food. And then the bear got upset that he ran out of and the bear literally started chasing him in circles around

the center of the parking lot. And they're faster than you think.

Yeah. And and so Steve ripped that shirt off, that pearl snap shirt, like like a Superman comic or something. And he took that shirt and he started whipping it at the bear, you know, like a bullwhip too. Yeah. And and the bear thought it was funny for about the first two or three times he whipped that shirt at him.

And then that that next time he did it, the bear just grabbed that shirt and yanked it. He pulled Steve down to the ground. Oh. And at this point we're all worried. We're all worried.

And while this was going on, I was actually moving my car to the other side of the parking lot because if you, if you've ever been around fed bears, they will try to break into your vehicle. And when they get in there, they do unspeakable things and you can't get the smell out and they rip all the trim and everything off.

And speakable by depositing organic materials. Yes. And,

so by the time I got parked, Steve was over there falling on the ground and I had a half eaten bag of Doritos and I just launched that and the bear I ruffled it.

Yeah. So he could get his attention.

And then I launched it over in the weeds and the bear took off after that. And then that's how we, Yeah. That's how we saved Steve from the bear.

Saved Steve from the

And how I got my picture with

with the bear. I've often said that when my career in extension is over, I need to sit down and look kinda like what you and I are doing is write some of these stories down because we get some really off the wall questions. And worked fourteen years as a retail meat cutter in a grocery store. And I'll never forget one time at Thanksgiving, this customer came up to me and she was asking me about the turkey and this, that and the other. And I was answering her questions and she says, by the way, how long does the turkey have to grow before or a chicken have to grow before it becomes a turkey?

I was like, what? You know, so speaks volumes about what some people, you know, are are lack of connection with the farm, you know. So we get a lot of really, really strange and funny stories and questions that we get, you know, in Extension.

You were talking about your police story, and I've got one of those from graduate school.

Yeah.

When I was a PhD student in Arizona, I managed the university feedlot, which was not too far from campus, but was on the outskirts of the city of Tucson on the other side of the interstate. So it was right on the edge of the city. So on the other side of the interstate was kinda like the industrial side of Tucson Yeah. Interstate, and it just became desert. And that's where the feedlot was.

And I was out feeding cows probably 5AM. You know, you do it before it got hot. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And

especially out there in

the desert. Here I am with the feed truck putting feed in all the bunks for all the cattle. And the next thing I know, the sheriff's department, the SWAT team, there was three gates to that facility, and they came busting through all guns blazing, full riot gear, guns out, and headed straight to the center of the feedlot facility, which was the hay shed, which was right in front of the feed bunks where I was feeding.

Yeah.

And I didn't know what was going on. And I thought they were coming in to bust me for God knows what. But it turns out that they just use the feedlot for training for training. Really? We had

You think that the university would let you know that?

Well, we had a lot of old vehicles and stuff. Yeah. From the surplus. It was like the boneyard for all the dead surplus vehicles. We can't sell them or give them away because they're government property.

They just sit there.

So they end up just stacked up outside and whatnot. And they they would just use that as a training resource. But I think the previous feedlot manager, like, had a deal with them where he told them they could come use it.

Yeah.

And probably were supposed to give us a heads up when they're

doing that They probably thought early in the morning, nobody's doing that.

Yeah. That's probably what they thought.

A bunch of college kids, they don't get up that early. Yeah. Well, you know, the one thing that a lot of folks I don't think they realize at the extension specialist level, you know, is how much we travel the state. And, you know, we're all over our state. You're all over Maine.

I'm all over Kentucky. And you'll have to help me out. So you you did your undergraduate degree at UK, the University of Kentucky. And you know as well as I do, basketball in Kentucky is almost a religion, and Reperina is the church. It's the cathedral.

It's not even a church. It's cathedral. And I don't know how many times in my travels that as soon as somebody finds out you're from the University of Kentucky and it just so happens to be basketball season, they have all kinds of messages for you to take back to the coach. And I and and we don't and I'm very grateful for the years that coach John Calipari was our coach, and now we have Mark Pope as our coach. And but if I ever get a chance to meet coach Cal, and I never did when he was there, and I'm sure it'll happen with Coach Pope as well, I've got a lot of messages for those guys from the people out there in The States.

Don't know if you have that with, you know, I know, you know, hockey's pretty big here as well. It even goes into football. I'm like, well, when I see him, you know, I'll let him know.

Yeah. I I get requests all the time. It's like, the university should do this or that or it's like, well, I don't have any of that authority or or anything to make those connections.

But Yeah. Appreciate the feedback. Appreciate the feedback. Yeah. You know, to dovetail on that last story, because I'd always said twenty minutes, I'll never forget.

You know, I'm originally from Illinois, born and raised in Illinois, bachelor's and master's University of Illinois and PhD at University of Missouri. So they're big sports schools as well. And I didn't understand the gravity of how huge basketball was in Kentucky. Because in Illinois, we had the Chicago Cubs, the Chicago White Sox, the Bears, and where I grew up was only an hour from St. Louis, so we had the St.

Louis Cardinals. So they had professional teams. Well, Kentucky doesn't have a professional team. And when we got there, I inherited a grad student and he had season tickets from somebody. And he said, well, you know, go enjoy the game, you know.

And so I had no mean, I knew Kentucky basketball was big. We've won several national titles. And so my wife and I are sitting there. And right next to us are two undergrad girls. And they had to be freshmen.

They weren't very old. And this one girl was on the phone with her dad and tears rolling down her eyes. Dad, I'm finally here. It's so beautiful, dad. It's so beautiful in Reperina.

So, you know, it's just different worlds. But, you know, this is really fun to talk about these stories. You could probably do several podcasts with just extension stories. You know?

Dr. Rentfrow has been coming up to Maine to help us with the Maine meat cutting school for the last nine years. Mhmm. The first year we invited him up, I did not know Doctor. Renfro. And so he stayed in a hotel.

And I had pneumonia.

Yeah, you were really sick. Were driving when that's when we did it down in Augusta, I believe you're driving back and forth.

But I was like, well, you can't invite someone to your state and then just ditch them in the hotel. So I we would go out to dinner and we got to be friends. Yeah, sitting there and talking. Then the next year he stayed with me at my house just to make life easier. So I didn't have to drive to the hotel and pick him up.

Then, But he got to noticing that I built and played guitars. And he said, man, I'd like to do that. And then I told him, well, next year, when you come up for the meat cutting school, we'll build you a guitar. And you would think that over the nine years that he's been coming, we would have built that one guitar and, you know, quick. Well, it took about six years because not only did we were we busy doing our job.

We had the pandemic one year that really put And cash on then the one year I got sick again.

Scott: You got sick. He had food poisoning.

Scott: Yeah, we got, we got, he had to drive me back home one day because I got so sick. Couldn't even drive.

Yeah. Thank goodness for GPS. But yeah, well, it got to be where we would, I don't think either of us realized how tired we were going to be at the end of the day. And the last thing we wanted to do is go out and try to create an electric guitar.

And I remember I was so sick, I could barely stand up. And I would just it'd be real late at night when we finally get home done from them. And I'd look at Greg and I'd say, Alright, let's go work on this guitar. He's like, No, no, don't worry about it. You're sick.

And I was like, Well, if we don't do it, it won't get done. But eventually, we did finish it.

We did finish it. Beautiful guitar. It's a really cool story. And I always tell the story of that guitar. So if you're familiar with it, it's a it's a Stratocaster shape, but me having to do things a little bit different.

So if you're familiar with nomenclature guitars, we put in humbuckers in there, which you don't really see a whole lot of strat shaped bodies with humbuckers in there. And not only were they the humbuckers, they were these were the ones that were designed by Slash. They were, like, $300, and I snuck that on the credit card. Boy, my wife had a fit when she seen that. But the the thing I think is really, really cool is the the covering of the guitar on the body was what?

A 110 year old piano that was came here from UMaine, wasn't it? Or something like that?

The teaching farm manager. Yeah. Don't ask me why he brought this old piano to the teaching farm. And they left it out in the weather.

Yeah. Was the patina on it is

But I salvaged a couple panels, and I love that alligator looking finish. It was such shellac that had aged. It was just beautiful. And we've I figured out a way to put it on top of your guitar without disturbing that finish. And then when we got done, we took some mother of pearl and cut out a butcher's cleaver.

Yeah. We

and laid it right on the fingerboard. Yep. And then doctor Renfro named it slaughterhouse Guitars.

Slaughterhouse Guitars. Yeah. And I'm still trying to learn how to play. If you squinch your ears really, really tightly, you might be able to pick out a little bit of Leonard Skynyrd. That's the difference between Colt Light.

He's a he's a old country guy, and I'm a hard rock guy. But we have fun, you know, playing guitars. He's a he's a heck of a lot better than I am. But, yeah, it's it's it's always fun coming up here.

Well, Dr. Rentfrow, it was fun sitting here swapping stories. We have got to go teach class. We do. We do.

If you've got fun stories, let us know in the comments. Yeah. And if you've got questions, comments, concerns about suggested episodes in the upcoming Maine Farmcast, send us an email.

Which, by the way, your guitar playing is the intro. Right?

Yeah. Yeah. Extension.farmcast@maine.edu.

That was cool. It was fun. Let me see how many people start laughing at that.