Content note: This episode includes discussion of suicide and mental health.
This week, Callum considers building a moth trap, Richard Negus explains the existence of “hyper moth season”, and Richard Prideaux admits to a surprisingly strong dislike of small dusty insects.
From there, things drift into some of Britain’s stranger countryside folklore. There is the Owlman of Cornwall, Cornish knockers, Hangman’s Hill, Black Shuck, the Essex Serpent and the question of why some parts of the country seem to accumulate far more weird stories than others.
Eventually they arrive at the modern rural legend that refuses to disappear: big cats in the British countryside. Were panthers and other exotic cats genuinely released decades ago? Could any still be out there? And if they were, wouldn’t one of the country’s gamekeepers have found one by now?
Patrons also get the aftershow, featuring an accidental rally stage in an ageing Freelander, lions roaring beside a Suffolk marsh and Callum having a professionally awkward moment while photographing a politician.
CountrySlide is a podcast that looks at farming, conservation and life in the British countryside.
You can contact us by email on: contact@countryslide.co.uk
Edited and Produced by Amy Green.
This transcript was generated using AI and may contain minor errors.
Richard Prideaux: Hello everyone, this is Richard from the Country Slide podcast. Now, normally we don't do preambles for episodes, we just go straight into them, but listening back to this week's episode, I think there's an opportunity here to talk about something that we don't really talk about on the show that much, although most of the point of Country Slide now is No matter where you are or where you work or what you're doing, we aim to provide at least half an hour of people talking absolute \*\*\*\*\*\*\*\* and trying to make each other laugh and hopefully you might find something in there as well that's humorous, useful, thoughtful, whatever. I want to talk about mental health and talk about, well, undoubtedly there are some struggles of working in the countryside and it feels like every week there's yet another thing. Whoever you are, wherever you are listening to this, there'll be something that you're either going through or you have just gone through or it's running away in the background or you're worried that it might be there in the future. Whoever you are, whatever you're feeling, there's someone else who has had a similar thought and you are absolutely not alone. That's why there are organisations like the DPJ Foundation, but there are quite a few others as well that specialise in this sort of thing in the rural space and we've put links to them in the show notes. They exist there to provide support. It's not a thing like a cry for help or a thing that you go to at the very last minute. These are resources you can go to at any time. no matter how you feel. And I know these organizations have really helped. Friends of mine, a good friend of mine has recently just sort of changed from working straight in agriculture to actually doing more of this kind of work. And there are so many opportunities to find help, to find support, to find that just you're not alone. So I want to put that in at the beginning of this episode and then you can completely disregard everything we say after this, mostly. Because let's face it, we talk complete \*\*\*\*\*\*\*\* every week. This week is no different. So how much do you think a body bag costs?
Richard Negus: I think probably about whether bad diplomacy costs, isn't it?
Callum McInerney-Riley: Is it an arm and a leg? There we go. Someone ought to do it.
Richard Prideaux: That catering place, Nisbet's, where you can go and buy proper catering level big stainless steel counters.
Callum McInerney-Riley: I do.
Richard Negus: I don't know them, but I would presume there must be a place that sells.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Unfortunately, I do know that and I have been sent the catalogue several times.
Richard Prideaux: So you end up in the sort of the rabbit hole of all these things that you don't see in normal catering kitchen shops, but you go, well, actually, yeah, I could get away with a complete 2 foot wide Chinese wok or something like that.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Part of me thinks I could probably turn my whole kitchen to stainless steel and it would just be easier to just hose the whole thing down with a pressure washer like at the end of each day.
Richard Prideaux: Isn't that basically what happened with the water leak?
Callum McInerney-Riley: Yeah, I mean, so that took a long time to repair.
Richard Prideaux: So when you're on the Nisbits website, you end up in these little rabbit holes of all the little catering things you didn't know you could buy. And you go like, oh yeah, I could buy 5,000 of those little jam pots that you get in a B&B or something like that. There's a medical equivalent of it. So I'm on the SP Services website, not a sponsor, and I've gone, I'm buying medical kit for one of the projects.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Is it enough? Is it enough bandages to turn yourself into a mummy in time for Halloween?
Richard Prideaux: Yes, it is actually. But also you could buy a heavy duty body bag for 43 pounds, 15, including that. Or the standard body bag is only 18 pounds, 11.
Richard Negus: Imagine how awful it would be just to suddenly realise I'm only worth a standard body.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Is there an etiquette like in front of the client?
Richard Negus: Yeah, officers and men.
Callum McInerney-Riley: No. We're going to have to bring in the gut buster. It's a big one.
Richard Prideaux: Once upon a time, a long time ago, when I used to be a real boy, I wrote the protocol for North Wales for how to deal with a chemical suicide victim that you'd found in a remote location.
Richard Negus: A chemical, what's a chemical suicide?
Richard Prideaux: So chemical suicides became, I think it came out of Japan. It was quite popular there, but it's basically you mix 2 chemicals together or more. I'm not going to give out the recipe.
Richard Negus: No, don't.
Richard Prideaux: But, and you mix it together in an enclosed space and the gas it gives off is lethal. So it's a method of.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Like Coco Mentos.
Richard Prideaux: Yeah, welcome to the cheerful podcast. Yeah, basically that. But people would then do it in a car. So with the window shut. And then part of the thing was that you would put labels inside little handwritten notices inside all the windows saying, this is what I've done in here, do not approach. Okay. because that came about because people would find a car.
Callum McInerney-Riley: I've got those in my downstairs toilet. Same note.
Richard Prideaux: So you'd get people coming up to this car they'd found and they sort of go, are you all right mate? And open the door and then get a whack of gas. So you'd have that, but then you'd also have the problem of what would happen to this body that had ingested all this gas and sort of anyone who's. Again, cheerful. But anyone who's dealt with a body knows that when you're moving it around, it releases gas that is trapped inside the body, particularly in the lungs. So there's this common thing of a body will make a noise and exhale. Its last breath might be 15 minutes, an hour later. If that last breath is full of this poison gas, then it becomes a problem. So when you're doing things like you're evacuating somebody who's done this in a tent on the side of a mountain, they might be evacuated by helicopter or in the back of a Land Rover or something, or in another confined space. So it then became, okay, how do you deal with this? And what we found was there are CBRN body bags, chemical, biological, radioactive, and nerve, nerve, nerve, nerve, that was it. And They are basically carbon filters in between 2 layers of very heavy duty plastic, so that if anything goes off inside this body bag, it can't escape anywhere. But they're also about a grand each. So I got to write the protocol that said, right, if you think this is happening, you get to order the very expensive body bag to put them in. And there are about 3 in Wales for the whole thing. And that was how you'd have to transport somebody. As far as I know, it's never been enacted, but It all came from, I was sitting in the back of a meeting and somebody was saying, this is the protocol, so this is for the fire and the police. You mountain rescue lot don't need to worry about it. And we went, I know you can do that in a tent really easily. And then, because I said that, I ended up having to write the protocol.
Richard Negus: Oh, can you imagine it? I bet there were some bean counters there going, that's all right, all the old bearded. big boys in the back there, they'll just fall asleep. Just give them some more digestive biscuits. And they go, oh my God, he's talked about the nerve agent. And yeah, I bet you are very popular. The accounts department of North Wales, they've got your name. Yeah, hate him.
Richard Prideaux: In all seriousness, if you are listening to that and that is something related to you, go and talk to somebody. Everyone, people will listen. There are places you can. talk about these kind of things and there are links in the notes because actually I'm doing that all seriousness because not everyone is having the greatest of time of things and there are plenty of people out there willing to talk and listen to you and it does help.
Richard Negus: There we go. See? And also they've got the body bags in Wales as well. So you know, there you go.
Callum McInerney-Riley: And hopefully this podcast will cheer you up.
Richard Negus: If not, if not, at least where to go. The it is interesting. I see, I always came to the conclusion having done, lots of exercises in full NBC black nuclear biological chemical. I just thought, you know, after all this stuff, I actually got this is true story. I got a commanding officer's commendation for my NBC defecation drills. So I mean, there you go. I mean, this is the source of, and I just thought, do you know what? If actually the bomb went off or the bloom went up or people were suddenly dropping down, frothing their mouth, I thought, am I going to put my mask on? No, an SAAT is short enough so you go, because it just is the worst possible death a human being could have. Is that ghastly gas? Gas, gas, quick lads, dig a trench, avoid the stench. as was said in the First World War.
Richard Prideaux: So if you enjoyed the horrors of warfare of the 20th century, please write in to Country Slide.
Callum McInerney-Riley: I don't know what's happened.
Richard Negus: I don't know. I thought we were going to talk about something like moths, weren't we? We're going to talk about moths.
Callum McInerney-Riley: I thought you said muffs.
Richard Negus: No moths.
Callum McInerney-Riley: You call them moths.
Richard Negus: I call them moths.
Callum McInerney-Riley: I've got a whole PowerPoint presentation on 80s muffs.
Richard Negus: I'm going to just delete that. He's done all his research on muffs and he's now absolutely stymied. No, honestly, We were going to talk about moths, weren't we, Callum? Wasn't that something that we sort of said, back in that production meeting, which we have to go and get this slick show?
Richard Prideaux: Hours and hours of practice.
Callum McInerney-Riley: I thought it was, I thought it was spiders.
Richard Negus: Oh yeah, spiders. Sorry, you're quite right. It was spiders, got nothing to do with moths. Have you noticed how many spiders and moths there are around at the moment?
Richard Prideaux: I'm looking at 4 right now behind the computer.
Richard Negus: Yeah, they're absolutely fantastic.
Callum McInerney-Riley: I don't get any. any moths really around, not big invasive ones, but.
Richard Negus: Have you got a moth trap though, Callum? Have you invested in one yet? Because you know that Xavier is going to love a moth trap.
Callum McInerney-Riley: I don't. So I got given essentially the blueprint and I went down a rabbit hole of exactly how to build my own moth trap. And And it's now a BBQ. So the hard bit is the black light, right? Is that right? The black light? It's basically a special bulb that you need to get that's, because then you can't do LED like you've got in your knocking shop there that have red LEDs. So you need to have these lights that will attract, is it a white light or a black light or something like that? But basically they're like insane wattage, considering like now you're only using like 4 watts or 6 watts on your standard light. So you need to get one of these and then you need to have like egg boxes. So you need the egg boxes where they go in and then you've got like a glass thing and that sort of set up and then you leave that and then the moths go in and they have a little hide in there and they get trapped and then you go in in the morning and look at them and check them all out. So I looked at how to do it and it was probably the ones you can buy off the shelf for about 200 quid and you can build your own a little DIY jobby for about 80 quid and you've got to work out how to power it and the places you can put it and find somewhere where some little scrotch not going to kick it over or whatever.
Richard Negus: Interestingly, I've got the answer to your conundrum because I was over in Ireland last weekend at Hedgerow Fest, which was as much fun as it was last year's Hedgerow Fest. And Mark Nowers came with me this time and he did a moth trapping thing. So we went and set the moth trap on the Friday when took people out there to go and see it. And this time of year is not quite so good. You really want to be sort of May, June. And that's when it's hyper moth season. Oh really is there it?
Callum McInerney-Riley: I did not know there was a hyper moth season.
Richard Negus: Yeah, when you sort of really got mad. And you also need to have, if you're going to set the trap, a still night. with little moon. Because if you've got a lot of moon, they're all sort of going up and going, the moon, the moon. So your light is imitating the moon. So you need to have either an actinic bulb or those black light bulbs you're talking about. You can actually get one of those now and you plug them into essentially one of those batteries like you can charge your phone off.
Callum McInerney-Riley: That's it. Yeah. You can get like a power. a power bank for them.
Richard Negus: That's right. And this thing looks, this bucket, which he said it's not the best. He's got this, I can't remember the name of the thing. Basically it's about four slats of wood and a downwards facing. Yeah. But you can buy this thing. It looks like the bucket. that people are into caravanning use if they haven't got a toilet in their caravan or carp fishing. So like basically a white bucket of that size. It's got a downwards facing funnel that leads to a thing that looks somewhat akin to a letterbox. And you put basically above this a little light with a clear plastic cowl around the top with one of these little things and it attracts enough. So they go down and exactly say you put egg boxes down at the bottom. And the fascinating thing we found was it wasn't a great moth trap night, although I think we found 11 different species in the two different ones, is the amount of dung beetles. So we were on an organic farm and the amount of dung beetles that had been attracted to this thing as well was astronomical. So if you wanted I wanted to see what the benefits of an organic farm not using animal, not using wormers. Yeah, that was it, because there were dung beetles in this thing which were layered like a cake.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Also, I should imagine it's quite good at attracting strange Irish people.
Richard Prideaux: It's like a secondary purpose of the model.
Richard Negus: Look at the light.
Callum McInerney-Riley: If you wanted, if you wanted odd. Irish people to gather around something. I bet that was the thing, right?
Richard Prideaux: So I was on a talk, did a talk thing down the South Downs last summer. It was a very, it was Roger Morgan Grenville's fault. He sort of got me involved in this thing. And I was one of the people doing a talk in this marquee in this big organic farm place called Westerlands. And before me was a guy called Mark Cocker.
Richard Negus: Yes, I know him.
Richard Prideaux: Yeah, and he had set up moth traps in Roger Morgan Grenville's garden the night before. And because Roger Morgan Grenville lives in this spectacular place on the South Downs in this most wildlife rich part of it, not too far from the Duke of Norfolk scaff. And so, you know, all this fantastic management there, were a lot of moths in this moth trap. He then transported the moth trap a few miles to this marquee, where he then let them all out. in the middle of his talk so people could look at them. The problem was they were still there when I did my talk. So I tried to do my talk through this low cloud of moths. So very confused and fluttering around at eye height. Have you ever tried to talk to somebody via a sort of screen of moths?
Richard Negus: A screen of moths. Yes. I mean, and also their attention is suddenly gone and said, oh my God, it's an eyed privet hawk moth and this thing the size of a soup plate has just landed on a child's face. Yeah.
Richard Prideaux: And I'm trying to talk about our ancestors and calorific count. It just doesn't. It's distracting. So I also don't really like moths. I must have said I have a mild phobia of moths.
Richard Negus: How interesting. I didn't ever have you down as someone who had a phobia about the living things.
Richard Prideaux: Oh, my Amy's respect for me dropped about 20 points when she discovered this, but she was already locked in by that point.
Richard Negus: Well done. Well done. You see, you keep the moth phobia hidden until the end.
Callum McInerney-Riley: I almost, there was a man we used to go fishing with. Well, he will be coming fishing with me soon. And he was like, to me, he was like a god. And he still is, really. One day, being Belgian, where he lives.
Richard Prideaux: A Belgian moth god, okay.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Where he lives is quite flat. And I took him in a big lift. And he's never really been in a big lift in a building made of glass. And he basically, he just \*\*\*\* himself and had to look the other way. What's this got to do with Moss? And this godlike, this godlike illusion was just shattered because he was afraid of heights.
Richard Negus: I can only sympathise with him.
Callum McInerney-Riley: I can only imagine.
Richard Negus: I know exactly where he's coming from. You should go and ring him up when we're finished recording this and say, I still love you, mighty fish God.
Callum McInerney-Riley: When you revealed the fear of moths, was it sort of too late to call it off or was it?
Richard Prideaux: No, I think she's seen the other value to me by that point.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Did she have a strong word with you? Like what you just did was somewhat embarrassing.
Richard Prideaux: I think even by the bounds of country slide, I'm not allowed to describe the effect it had on. Discovering that your life partner is afraid of very tiny dusty insects.
Richard Negus: Yeah, exactly. but I mean, it's fair enough though. I mean, imagine that. We sort of got, if we got Mark Nowers on again and he says, oh, it's fantastic, because he gets very, very excited about when he finds a certain moth species. And moth species are named far more excitingly than butterflies, because one of the reasons why the common name for so many bosses moths are so eclectic and weird is because moth fanatics tended to be in the Victorian and Edwardian periods, members of the clergy, because they, A, had graveyards at the end of their garden, and B, it sort of, they're mooching around in between writing sermons and things. Actually putting a moth trap out was not considered a sort of weird thing. He's always just thinking about, you know, he's going to go and equate our harvest to the book of John or something. So therefore they named a lot of them and most of them, the moth names are utterly bonkers batshit mental. And they got funny little faces, a lot of moths and or some of them look like bird \*\*\*\* or twigs.
Callum McInerney-Riley: The Mother Shipton has got a winged pattern that looks like a witch's face.
Richard Negus: Correct. What's the Hebrew signs? It's called the Hebrew signs. It's like a Joe Rogan podcast. Yeah, the Hebrew signs, Hebrew signs there. No, it's a moth's name. Yeah, there's about 3 Hebrew signs because they think on the back says a symbol that looks like a Hebrew. letter, and there are things that as well, which I, or some of the eyed ones, and there's a the, eyed hawk moth, the eyed privet hawk moth, and that absolutely fantastic. But if you go and catch one, stop naming moths.
Callum McInerney-Riley: You can't tell me what to do.
Richard Negus: If you catch those things, Callum, honestly, and I've got a photograph of Charlie's hand when he was about 8, perhaps 7, something like that, with an eyed privet hawk moth on his hand. And it is the same width as his palm. And I took a little film of it and he could just hear his little voice in the back going, oh my God, because this is like holding something that's bigger than a wren. And you think, How have I not noticed that this thing is living in my garden? Because it sort of looks like it's got the wingspan of a Vulcan bomber. And there it is. And you only know it's there when you use a moth trap. And so I think there is this thing that looks like a toilet from a camper van. if you're getting one, you'll get all the doggers will be nodding you, go, no, I'm not one of you lot. I'm A motha, not a dogga. And yeah, get one because it's the best thing. It's the best thing. I'm a motha, not a dogga. It's like it's like I'm a lover, not a fighter, but more more plus dogs. I like these dusty in sticks.
Richard Prideaux: Hi, this is Richard from the Sidecountry Network and I am here to ask you for some help. Sidecountry is the non-profit organisation that produces this podcast and several others like it. We're an independent media organisation that is working to connect people with the British countryside and you can help us do that by signing up for our Patreon. If you have not supported a show on Patreon before, it's very simple. click on the link in the show notes for this episode or go to sidecountry.co.uk/support and follow the steps there. You can sign up for different levels and they start at just five pounds a month. In return, you'll get early access to all of the Sidecountry shows, some occasional bonus content, and all of the other perks you get from helping us out. You will also get that warm, fuzzy feeling knowing that you have done something to help connect the public to the countryside in all of its forms. So go to sidecountry.co.uk forward slash support or click on the link in the notes for this episode on your podcast player. And now back to the show. Whilst you've been talking, I've been looking it up. Mothophobia is the fear of moths or lepidopterophobia is the fear of moths and butterflies.
Richard Negus: Moths and butterflies.
Richard Prideaux: I'm only afraid of moths. And apparently it's the unpredictable and fluttering movement of moths often triggers panic or a feeling of losing control. That may well be it. I mean, also a moth killed my father in front of me while when I was 5.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Did he and did he float away?
Richard Prideaux: He went out to go and buy some milk when I was five, and she'll be back any day now, as long as I keep making a success of myself, right?
Richard Negus: I've met your mum. She did mutter something about, you know, your dad was snatched by moths. That's terrible.
Richard Prideaux: It's a terrible Cornish thing that happens. Well, there is an owl man of St Austell. And I'm not joking, there is a legend of the Owl Man of St. Austell.
Richard Negus: The Owl Man.
Richard Prideaux: Owl Man.
Richard Negus: See, they say this sort of stuff only happens actually down. You take the mickey out of Suffolk. But let's be perfectly honest. You've got, I mean, there is, there are very few. guidebooks and tourist tap books of the folklores of Suffolk. Yeah, if you go down to the southwest, I mean, hell, Dartmoor, it's got something that's thicker than bloody war and peace. It's like this thick, he says, holding a copy of William Cobbett's Rural Rides. It's ridiculously thick because there's all these things. Oh yeah, Nat Tor there. That's the reason why that looks like that is because, well, there was once been a time Miss Hunter with a great big cowl over his head and he would like gallop along there and then some other bloke came along. And it sounds like, I mean, all of these things need to be read in the voice of Vicky Pollard.
Richard Prideaux: It's also a giants can get blamed for a lot of things.
Richard Negus: Yes.
Richard Prideaux: Pixies. Well, knockers. You've got the knockers. So the knockers are the Cornish mind spirits. Okay. And they?
Callum McInerney-Riley: What? Mind spirit.
Richard Prideaux: So when you were in the tin mines, you'd hear this knocking noise.
Callum McInerney-Riley: I thought you meant like mind. Yeah.
Richard Prideaux: And they were, no, mine. Mine. Mine. They were spirits that warned you of impending collapse, or if you followed them, they would take you down towards the rich veins and down the tin mines. They've got the beast of Bodmin more, but that's mostly made-up.
Richard Negus: Yeah, it's I mean, have you got any sort of things around your way, Callum? Where I mean, if you got sort of, oh, don't go down there because you'll get, attacked by something.
Callum McInerney-Riley: No, we've got a great one. We've got a thing called Hangman Hill. So Hangman Hill is a place that you can, I think the legend is that people were hung there quite a lot. and you will place a car quite clearly going downhill and it will roll the opposite way.
Richard Negus: Really? Oh, why the out is this? Have you tried it out?
Callum McInerney-Riley: Yeah, I've tried it out and it worked. You can clearly see you're looking and the way the trees are and you're on Hangman Hill, you're looking and the car goes the opposite way. It goes up the hill.
Richard Prideaux: It's in mushrooms. Do you often find this in September? Sort of in September, just after.
Richard Negus: You've been on one of his, you've been in one of Predo's courses, and then you come back and your car starts rolling up.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Hangman here in Epping Forest. Yeah.
Richard Negus: Okay.
Callum McInerney-Riley: It's a ghost story of the 17th century executioner or highway that haunts the site and his spirit.
Richard Prideaux: How many cars were around in the 17th century?
Callum McInerney-Riley: Well, I mean, it probably would have worked for your horse and cart.
Richard Prideaux: The horses walking backwards up that hill, if.
Callum McInerney-Riley: You think they're right. They moonwalk, don't they? That's actually, it was said that Michael Jackson actually took the inspiration for the moonwalk from the horses of Hangman's Hill.
Richard Negus: That sounds brilliant. I mean, I have to say, there's round here we have, they say about the reed beds. They reckon that in there, if you hear the sighing of the reed beds and they say that's the moans of the people lost at sea. But the one I like best is Black Shuck. And Black Shuck is if you actually go to the place, one of the places that Richard thinks doesn't exist, which is Bungie or Blytheborough, a Blytheborough on the church door there. the Holy Trinity Church there, are these scratches, massive scratches and the burn marks on the door there. And they say that's where black shuck, which was Satan took the form of a large black dog and then was cast out by the vicar doing his sermon. And as they tried to get out, those are the marks of the thing there. And it's such a big thing that if you go into, I'm sure it's Bungie, Now there's actually the symbol on there is a black shuck, which is this demonic dog, which is supposed to, but that's really the two things. And we've already talked about in previous episodes about the green children of Woolpit. Oh yeah. But I mean, there's not that many, but it is something that strikes me that over on the West, you've got a lot a lot more folklore and blame it on the, is that because you drank stronger cider over there?
Richard Prideaux: It's possibly a sulphide issue, yes. I think also longer history because over on your side, every couple of 100 years, there was just everyone was wiped out by the invaders from across the sea and you started again from scratch. Or the bit you're standing on was actually just marsh and no one lived there. So there's nothing there. Whereas over here, a story gets passed down again and again. So there's a bit of woodland we look after, which it's called late, well, the bit through the end of it, it's called Lady Baggot's driveway. We're about to start a project there, trying to get sort of a living history of the place. And it's attached to, there's this big. stately home that ended up becoming a mental asylum. So it was a really interesting place. But this stately home just up the hill has a standing stone in the lawn, which was moved from the forest up on the hill. And this standing stone has got, it's got some Latin inscriptions, it's got some Ogam runes, and it's got some...
Richard Negus: Ogam runes? What are they?
Richard Prideaux: So they are... sort of a Brythonic rune and it was so it's not Norse, it's not Roman, it's not Latin, it's somewhere in between. But there's all these different runes from different time periods all on the same stone. So this stone is something that people have been graffiti on for centuries and centuries and centuries. And when you realize you've got people passing through the same place again and again, a story gets attached to that place. But I am firmly of the belief that you can get an a sort of an energy to a place that you're picking up on as a human. I think we talked about this before, but there's that bridge near Dumbarton where the dogs jump off the side. This is the, there's this bridge where you are warned to keep your dog on a lead because there's one bit on the right hand parapet where dogs jump off deep right down into the river below and you don't quite often die doing it. And there's been all these theories about why it was. This leading theory is that there's a smell of mink in the stones under the parapet. So dogs are going up there for this smell. Another theory is that it's something called infrasound. So in the same way you get infrared as being sort of spectrum of light just outside of our vision, there's infrasound, which is cause, which is very, very, very low frequency, which you can detect but can't quite perceive. So your body knows it's happening, but you can't hear it. And that's why some places feel spooky. And it's to do with the exact, like the residents of the water moving through there or the air moving through the trees and things. That's one theory for why epic forests feel so creepy. It might also be all those people who were murdered by the drug gang.
Callum McInerney-Riley: There's got to be so many people in there, so many, so much cash and stuff buried in epic forests. It's unreal.
Richard Negus: It's Epping Forest are fascinating. There's a book called The Keeper's Tale, which is written about one of the keepers of Epping Forest. And I think he wrote it in the late 1800s. And I mean, you know, we whinge now about youth coming out and doing mischief. It's just nothing but a bunch of people coming out of London and basically going to Epping Forest, which was this rural deal and just committing mayhem.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Oh yeah. I was there. It's great.
Richard Negus: Yes, your great, great, great, great grandfather was that kid killing red squirrels with a catapult and he talks about it. It's worth reading it. It's a, I've got it somewhere in the book collection and I'll give it to you because it's something which is on your doorstep, sort of.
Callum McInerney-Riley: There's also a myth and legend about The Essex Serpent.
Richard Negus: Oh yes, the Essex Serpent.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Yeah, They made a TV programme or series about it.
Richard Negus: Yeah, there was a book called The Essex Serpent. Yeah.
Callum McInerney-Riley: There's kind of a long history of believing some kind of water dragon existed in Beers, I think, which is sort of Suffolk, Essex border.
Richard Negus: Yeah.
Callum McInerney-Riley: There's quite a lot of those random stories that come up again and again. But it's funny how the sort of The legends die out, isn't it? There isn't, is there any, I suppose the modern equivalent of these legends, and part of me wants to believe, is panthers and big cats.
Richard Prideaux: Right, I'm reinvested now, go on.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Back in. Well, so we had for a long period, lots of cats going missing. by a train line. And this was a big train, not a little train.
Richard Negus: That's when Goldie came to visit, wasn't it? Yeah. Okay.
Callum McInerney-Riley: And loads of cats went missing.
Richard Prideaux: It's a cheery episode, this one.
Callum McInerney-Riley: The whole lots went missing and a lot of people decided that they were going to blame a potential panther. And there was loads of rumours, people had seen it. So Pishombury Park, which was a, it's quite a lot.
Richard Prideaux: The potential panther of Pisherbury Park.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Perfect. The potential panther. Well, Pisherbury Park. Haven't we got our episode title? Brilliant. So yeah, there was rumours of There's always rumours of like livestock going missing.
Richard Negus: Yeah.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Things like that and things like that. Guinea pigs. And so the cats went missing. That was a thing. People reported that they'd found claw marks on a tree and they were unlike anything else. Probably done with a pen knife. Probably someone trying to write. RN loves CN forever on the feet. But there was all this supposed evidence, but no one could get a camera phone out and record one properly. I've also heard people tell me that they have seen, I'm not revealing the sources, they have seen things through thermal scopes and through regular scopes early in the morning that are unexplained animals that they think could have been big cats. So, mic drop. Any more to add?
Richard Prideaux: Well, I know there's a WhatsApp group which is keepers and deer managers sharing video footage of dogging sites they found. Well, okay, round the table now, do you think there have been Two questions have been big cats at loose in the British countryside and are currently.
Richard Negus: Yes, I think there were. I think that there was the Dangerous Animals Act, which was something like the early 70s. And it was quite a cool thing for people in the swinging 60s who were like really cool guys to have big cats, but you had them as cubs. And so they were cool. And so you would sort of have them on the lead. And there's lots and lots of things. If you look at those Carnaby Street style photographs of these sort of doe-eyed beauties or some sort of Austin Powers, but not a pastiche, walking along with some sort of big cat. And then they brought in the Wild Animals Act. And there wasn't a sort of a record of all these people going into the police station in Stowe Market and saying, hello, I need to hand in this panther due to your new record. And I'm sure quite a number of people thinking, bloody hell, these wild boar are digging everything up and I'll let them go. And then he goes, I'm sorry, I'm just rewilding. But there, they were just sort of saying, oh, go on, go off, you'll be fine, you'll be able to go and hunt your own food. So I think there was.
Callum McInerney-Riley: I like to think of it like when in Hot Fuzz where he says, you go to the London and he's just sort of packs his panther off of a sort of a leg of lamb and just said, exactly, go on, run free, run free, you'll be fine.
Richard Negus: So I think there were, I think the ultimate story of are there any now? I think it's extremely unlikely. And I think the reason being is we've got a load of urban people who live in the countryside now and they go to pubs or they walk back from a drinks party at a mate of theirs and they look out and they see a muntjac or they see a roe deer and they go, bloody hell, look at the size of that. And it's silhouetted against the moon. And they remember because they're sort of middle-aged and they remember all these stories about the big cats and they go, yeah, I've definitely seen it. I've never seen anything like it. No, you've never seen anything like it because before You lived in Surbiton and so therefore the only wildlife you saw were pigeons and feral foxes. So therefore I reckon that's probably it is the drinks parties of people who don't come from round our way, seeing muntjac and roe deer and then \*\*\*\* their pants.
Richard Prideaux: What about you, Callum?
Callum McInerney-Riley: I reckon there probably were. I don't. I don't know if we have the wildlife availability to sustain such a creature.
Richard Negus: No, we do.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Not round my way for sure. Like I don't think that a cat's got to eat a fair bit of stuff and I think you'd probably see evidence of it in a lot of places. So in round my way, urban environments, absolutely not. I mean, how many other cats could it feasibly eat before it needs to start eating bigger things and would get spotted? Probably. It's like foxes round my way. They're like hanging out in front gardens. If you did release a load of wild cats, they'd probably domesticate themselves in about six months. And they'd be like, oh, come on, give us a bit of chicken. I know you're good for it. That's like KFC if you did it like that.
Richard Prideaux: Milling around outside the co-op.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Yeah, they'd just be, they'd be knocking about saying, come on, give us a fish. I know you've got one, mate. I'd be up the pond waiting for me.
Richard Negus: Yeah. What do you think? Do you think, have you got me in North Wales?
Richard Prideaux: There's all sorts of things. I think they definitely were out for a time. And I think the sort of, the stories of that carried on a lot longer. I think there's a possibility they still could be out there. It's easier for it to be a big cat out here, say, where there's big open spaces and lots of forests and lots of open upland and a lot of sheep.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Yeah, I mean, a sheep's going to sustain a big cat for a bit, right?
Richard Prideaux: And again, like I've talked about on the show before, I've seen things you people wouldn't believe, but one of the things I have seen is a sheep carcass up in a tree in a forest, which is like, okay, that's been dragged up there by an animal or a human and neither option is good. up in the middle of a natural resources Wales forest in the middle of nowhere in a spruce plantation. So there could be something out there. One of the arguments I've heard is that, well, there's so many people out now with thermal binoculars and scopes, or as my friend called them the other day, magical \*\*\*\*\* goggles. Which, you know, There's all record. There are basically fancy digital cameras so they can record, you'll see all this. I suspect if there are there, people might have seen that and thought, even if I share this with people, it's going to get laughed at. You know, it's going to be, I'm going to be a thing of ridicule. It's like seeing aliens or seeing a UFO. The sort of people who really talk about the UFOs are seen are the people who really want there to be UFOs. Same with big cats. There was a story a couple of years ago where it was the big cat DNA was found on our carcass, but it just happened to be investigated by the guy who's got the big cat podcast.
Callum McInerney-Riley: The big cat investigation society.
Richard Prideaux: Yeah. So you know, there's the vested interest there, but.
Richard Negus: How it's like old Johnny Kingdom down in the on Exmoor is that he used to make these rather dull films about the Exmoor, about the Devon and Somerset Stag Hounds. And they know about seven people used to buy him. He then made one film once about the big cats of Exmoor and boom, he suddenly was on TV. You couldn't move on in the 1990s for Johnny Kingdom films about wildlife on and down in the South West. because it was in his best interest. I'd like to finish this by saying, Callum and I probably in the course of our career together, how many keepers do you think we have interviewed and photographed, Callum?
Callum McInerney-Riley: At least three.
Richard Negus: At least three. So that's quite a lot. Maybe 10 lots is the answer. And I would say that the one thing, no, he's probably right. It'd probably be a put a zero on the end of that.
Callum McInerney-Riley: I dread to think how many.
Richard Negus: And the one thing we know about keepers is they will quite like to go and say, because they want to remind us that they are the apex predator, quite rightly because they are. And they'll tell you what they've killed. and I haven't had one and I have known and worked around and been friends with gamekeepers. I'm 55 years old and I should think probably I've known them for 55 years and I have not had one say shot bloody great big black panther the other day and not one. So I have to say is that the apex predator in the UK is the gamekeeper. And I have not yet found one. I'm not saying obviously I haven't met them all, but I have not yet found one who said that they have killed a big cat. They've killed lots of things, but they have not killed a big cat. So I think the probability is they were there no more.
Richard Prideaux: You'd be off ticket though if you did kill it.
Richard Negus: Yeah, you ain't going to put it on the jibbit. No.
Richard Prideaux: And I think that's a good time to bring the main show over to an end and we'll go over to the after show.
Richard Negus: Hurrah.
Richard Prideaux: We could talk about the Chester Zoo and their child predator tours. Goodbye everyone.
Richard Negus: Goodbye.
Richard Prideaux: Hello everyone, this is Richard from the Country Slide podcast. Now, normally we don't do preambles for episodes, we just go straight into them, but listening back to this week's episode, I think there's an opportunity here to talk about something that we don't really talk about on the show that much, although most of the point of Country Slide now is No matter where you are or where you work or what you're doing, we aim to provide at least half an hour of people talking absolute \*\*\*\*\*\*\*\* and trying to make each other laugh and hopefully you might find something in there as well that's humorous, useful, thoughtful, whatever. I want to talk about mental health and talk about, well, undoubtedly there are some struggles of working in the countryside and it feels like every week there's yet another thing. Whoever you are, wherever you are listening to this, there'll be something that you're either going through or you have just gone through or it's running away in the background or you're worried that it might be there in the future. Whoever you are, whatever you're feeling, there's someone else who has had a similar thought and you are absolutely not alone. That's why there are organisations like the DPJ Foundation, but there are quite a few others as well that specialise in this sort of thing in the rural space and we've put links to them in the show notes. They exist there to provide support. It's not a thing like a cry for help or a thing that you go to at the very last minute. These are resources you can go to at any time. no matter how you feel. And I know these organizations have really helped. Friends of mine, a good friend of mine has recently just sort of changed from working straight in agriculture to actually doing more of this kind of work. And there are so many opportunities to find help, to find support, to find that just you're not alone. So I want to put that in at the beginning of this episode and then you can completely disregard everything we say after this, mostly. Because let's face it, we talk complete \*\*\*\*\*\*\*\* every week. This week is no different. So how much do you think a body bag costs?
Richard Negus: I think probably about whether bad diplomacy costs, isn't it?
Callum McInerney-Riley: Is it an arm and a leg? There we go. Someone ought to do it.
Richard Prideaux: That catering place, Nisbet's, where you can go and buy proper catering level big stainless steel counters.
Callum McInerney-Riley: I do.
Richard Negus: I don't know them, but I would presume there must be a place that sells.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Unfortunately, I do know that and I have been sent the catalogue several times.
Richard Prideaux: So you end up in the sort of the rabbit hole of all these things that you don't see in normal catering kitchen shops, but you go, well, actually, yeah, I could get away with a complete 2 foot wide Chinese wok or something like that.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Part of me thinks I could probably turn my whole kitchen to stainless steel and it would just be easier to just hose the whole thing down with a pressure washer like at the end of each day.
Richard Prideaux: Isn't that basically what happened with the water leak?
Callum McInerney-Riley: Yeah, I mean, so that took a long time to repair.
Richard Prideaux: So when you're on the Nisbits website, you end up in these little rabbit holes of all the little catering things you didn't know you could buy. And you go like, oh yeah, I could buy 5,000 of those little jam pots that you get in a B&B or something like that. There's a medical equivalent of it. So I'm on the SP Services website, not a sponsor, and I've gone, I'm buying medical kit for one of the projects.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Is it enough? Is it enough bandages to turn yourself into a mummy in time for Halloween?
Richard Prideaux: Yes, it is actually. But also you could buy a heavy duty body bag for 43 pounds, 15, including that. Or the standard body bag is only 18 pounds, 11.
Richard Negus: Imagine how awful it would be just to suddenly realise I'm only worth a standard body.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Is there an etiquette like in front of the client?
Richard Negus: Yeah, officers and men.
Callum McInerney-Riley: No. We're going to have to bring in the gut buster. It's a big one.
Richard Prideaux: Once upon a time, a long time ago, when I used to be a real boy, I wrote the protocol for North Wales for how to deal with a chemical suicide victim that you'd found in a remote location.
Richard Negus: A chemical, what's a chemical suicide?
Richard Prideaux: So chemical suicides became, I think it came out of Japan. It was quite popular there, but it's basically you mix 2 chemicals together or more. I'm not going to give out the recipe.
Richard Negus: No, don't.
Richard Prideaux: But, and you mix it together in an enclosed space and the gas it gives off is lethal. So it's a method of.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Like Coco Mentos.
Richard Prideaux: Yeah, welcome to the cheerful podcast. Yeah, basically that. But people would then do it in a car. So with the window shut. And then part of the thing was that you would put labels inside little handwritten notices inside all the windows saying, this is what I've done in here, do not approach. Okay. because that came about because people would find a car.
Callum McInerney-Riley: I've got those in my downstairs toilet. Same note.
Richard Prideaux: So you'd get people coming up to this car they'd found and they sort of go, are you all right mate? And open the door and then get a whack of gas. So you'd have that, but then you'd also have the problem of what would happen to this body that had ingested all this gas and sort of anyone who's. Again, cheerful. But anyone who's dealt with a body knows that when you're moving it around, it releases gas that is trapped inside the body, particularly in the lungs. So there's this common thing of a body will make a noise and exhale. Its last breath might be 15 minutes, an hour later. If that last breath is full of this poison gas, then it becomes a problem. So when you're doing things like you're evacuating somebody who's done this in a tent on the side of a mountain, they might be evacuated by helicopter or in the back of a Land Rover or something, or in another confined space. So it then became, okay, how do you deal with this? And what we found was there are CBRN body bags, chemical, biological, radioactive, and nerve, nerve, nerve, nerve, that was it. And They are basically carbon filters in between 2 layers of very heavy duty plastic, so that if anything goes off inside this body bag, it can't escape anywhere. But they're also about a grand each. So I got to write the protocol that said, right, if you think this is happening, you get to order the very expensive body bag to put them in. And there are about 3 in Wales for the whole thing. And that was how you'd have to transport somebody. As far as I know, it's never been enacted, but It all came from, I was sitting in the back of a meeting and somebody was saying, this is the protocol, so this is for the fire and the police. You mountain rescue lot don't need to worry about it. And we went, I know you can do that in a tent really easily. And then, because I said that, I ended up having to write the protocol.
Richard Negus: Oh, can you imagine it? I bet there were some bean counters there going, that's all right, all the old bearded. big boys in the back there, they'll just fall asleep. Just give them some more digestive biscuits. And they go, oh my God, he's talked about the nerve agent. And yeah, I bet you are very popular. The accounts department of North Wales, they've got your name. Yeah, hate him.
Richard Prideaux: In all seriousness, if you are listening to that and that is something related to you, go and talk to somebody. Everyone, people will listen. There are places you can. talk about these kind of things and there are links in the notes because actually I'm doing that all seriousness because not everyone is having the greatest of time of things and there are plenty of people out there willing to talk and listen to you and it does help.
Richard Negus: There we go. See? And also they've got the body bags in Wales as well. So you know, there you go.
Callum McInerney-Riley: And hopefully this podcast will cheer you up.
Richard Negus: If not, if not, at least where to go. The it is interesting. I see, I always came to the conclusion having done, lots of exercises in full NBC black nuclear biological chemical. I just thought, you know, after all this stuff, I actually got this is true story. I got a commanding officer's commendation for my NBC defecation drills. So I mean, there you go. I mean, this is the source of, and I just thought, do you know what? If actually the bomb went off or the bloom went up or people were suddenly dropping down, frothing their mouth, I thought, am I going to put my mask on? No, an SAAT is short enough so you go, because it just is the worst possible death a human being could have. Is that ghastly gas? Gas, gas, quick lads, dig a trench, avoid the stench. as was said in the First World War.
Richard Prideaux: So if you enjoyed the horrors of warfare of the 20th century, please write in to Country Slide.
Callum McInerney-Riley: I don't know what's happened.
Richard Negus: I don't know. I thought we were going to talk about something like moths, weren't we? We're going to talk about moths.
Callum McInerney-Riley: I thought you said muffs.
Richard Negus: No moths.
Callum McInerney-Riley: You call them moths.
Richard Negus: I call them moths.
Callum McInerney-Riley: I've got a whole PowerPoint presentation on 80s muffs.
Richard Negus: I'm going to just delete that. He's done all his research on muffs and he's now absolutely stymied. No, honestly, We were going to talk about moths, weren't we, Callum? Wasn't that something that we sort of said, back in that production meeting, which we have to go and get this slick show?
Richard Prideaux: Hours and hours of practice.
Callum McInerney-Riley: I thought it was, I thought it was spiders.
Richard Negus: Oh yeah, spiders. Sorry, you're quite right. It was spiders, got nothing to do with moths. Have you noticed how many spiders and moths there are around at the moment?
Richard Prideaux: I'm looking at 4 right now behind the computer.
Richard Negus: Yeah, they're absolutely fantastic.
Callum McInerney-Riley: I don't get any. any moths really around, not big invasive ones, but.
Richard Negus: Have you got a moth trap though, Callum? Have you invested in one yet? Because you know that Xavier is going to love a moth trap.
Callum McInerney-Riley: I don't. So I got given essentially the blueprint and I went down a rabbit hole of exactly how to build my own moth trap. And And it's now a BBQ. So the hard bit is the black light, right? Is that right? The black light? It's basically a special bulb that you need to get that's, because then you can't do LED like you've got in your knocking shop there that have red LEDs. So you need to have these lights that will attract, is it a white light or a black light or something like that? But basically they're like insane wattage, considering like now you're only using like 4 watts or 6 watts on your standard light. So you need to get one of these and then you need to have like egg boxes. So you need the egg boxes where they go in and then you've got like a glass thing and that sort of set up and then you leave that and then the moths go in and they have a little hide in there and they get trapped and then you go in in the morning and look at them and check them all out. So I looked at how to do it and it was probably the ones you can buy off the shelf for about 200 quid and you can build your own a little DIY jobby for about 80 quid and you've got to work out how to power it and the places you can put it and find somewhere where some little scrotch not going to kick it over or whatever.
Richard Negus: Interestingly, I've got the answer to your conundrum because I was over in Ireland last weekend at Hedgerow Fest, which was as much fun as it was last year's Hedgerow Fest. And Mark Nowers came with me this time and he did a moth trapping thing. So we went and set the moth trap on the Friday when took people out there to go and see it. And this time of year is not quite so good. You really want to be sort of May, June. And that's when it's hyper moth season. Oh really is there it?
Callum McInerney-Riley: I did not know there was a hyper moth season.
Richard Negus: Yeah, when you sort of really got mad. And you also need to have, if you're going to set the trap, a still night. with little moon. Because if you've got a lot of moon, they're all sort of going up and going, the moon, the moon. So your light is imitating the moon. So you need to have either an actinic bulb or those black light bulbs you're talking about. You can actually get one of those now and you plug them into essentially one of those batteries like you can charge your phone off.
Callum McInerney-Riley: That's it. Yeah. You can get like a power. a power bank for them.
Richard Negus: That's right. And this thing looks, this bucket, which he said it's not the best. He's got this, I can't remember the name of the thing. Basically it's about four slats of wood and a downwards facing. Yeah. But you can buy this thing. It looks like the bucket. that people are into caravanning use if they haven't got a toilet in their caravan or carp fishing. So like basically a white bucket of that size. It's got a downwards facing funnel that leads to a thing that looks somewhat akin to a letterbox. And you put basically above this a little light with a clear plastic cowl around the top with one of these little things and it attracts enough. So they go down and exactly say you put egg boxes down at the bottom. And the fascinating thing we found was it wasn't a great moth trap night, although I think we found 11 different species in the two different ones, is the amount of dung beetles. So we were on an organic farm and the amount of dung beetles that had been attracted to this thing as well was astronomical. So if you wanted I wanted to see what the benefits of an organic farm not using animal, not using wormers. Yeah, that was it, because there were dung beetles in this thing which were layered like a cake.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Also, I should imagine it's quite good at attracting strange Irish people.
Richard Prideaux: It's like a secondary purpose of the model.
Richard Negus: Look at the light.
Callum McInerney-Riley: If you wanted, if you wanted odd. Irish people to gather around something. I bet that was the thing, right?
Richard Prideaux: So I was on a talk, did a talk thing down the South Downs last summer. It was a very, it was Roger Morgan Grenville's fault. He sort of got me involved in this thing. And I was one of the people doing a talk in this marquee in this big organic farm place called Westerlands. And before me was a guy called Mark Cocker.
Richard Negus: Yes, I know him.
Richard Prideaux: Yeah, and he had set up moth traps in Roger Morgan Grenville's garden the night before. And because Roger Morgan Grenville lives in this spectacular place on the South Downs in this most wildlife rich part of it, not too far from the Duke of Norfolk scaff. And so, you know, all this fantastic management there, were a lot of moths in this moth trap. He then transported the moth trap a few miles to this marquee, where he then let them all out. in the middle of his talk so people could look at them. The problem was they were still there when I did my talk. So I tried to do my talk through this low cloud of moths. So very confused and fluttering around at eye height. Have you ever tried to talk to somebody via a sort of screen of moths?
Richard Negus: A screen of moths. Yes. I mean, and also their attention is suddenly gone and said, oh my God, it's an eyed privet hawk moth and this thing the size of a soup plate has just landed on a child's face. Yeah.
Richard Prideaux: And I'm trying to talk about our ancestors and calorific count. It just doesn't. It's distracting. So I also don't really like moths. I must have said I have a mild phobia of moths.
Richard Negus: How interesting. I didn't ever have you down as someone who had a phobia about the living things.
Richard Prideaux: Oh, my Amy's respect for me dropped about 20 points when she discovered this, but she was already locked in by that point.
Richard Negus: Well done. Well done. You see, you keep the moth phobia hidden until the end.
Callum McInerney-Riley: I almost, there was a man we used to go fishing with. Well, he will be coming fishing with me soon. And he was like, to me, he was like a god. And he still is, really. One day, being Belgian, where he lives.
Richard Prideaux: A Belgian moth god, okay.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Where he lives is quite flat. And I took him in a big lift. And he's never really been in a big lift in a building made of glass. And he basically, he just \*\*\*\* himself and had to look the other way. What's this got to do with Moss? And this godlike, this godlike illusion was just shattered because he was afraid of heights.
Richard Negus: I can only sympathise with him.
Callum McInerney-Riley: I can only imagine.
Richard Negus: I know exactly where he's coming from. You should go and ring him up when we're finished recording this and say, I still love you, mighty fish God.
Callum McInerney-Riley: When you revealed the fear of moths, was it sort of too late to call it off or was it?
Richard Prideaux: No, I think she's seen the other value to me by that point.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Did she have a strong word with you? Like what you just did was somewhat embarrassing.
Richard Prideaux: I think even by the bounds of country slide, I'm not allowed to describe the effect it had on. Discovering that your life partner is afraid of very tiny dusty insects.
Richard Negus: Yeah, exactly. but I mean, it's fair enough though. I mean, imagine that. We sort of got, if we got Mark Nowers on again and he says, oh, it's fantastic, because he gets very, very excited about when he finds a certain moth species. And moth species are named far more excitingly than butterflies, because one of the reasons why the common name for so many bosses moths are so eclectic and weird is because moth fanatics tended to be in the Victorian and Edwardian periods, members of the clergy, because they, A, had graveyards at the end of their garden, and B, it sort of, they're mooching around in between writing sermons and things. Actually putting a moth trap out was not considered a sort of weird thing. He's always just thinking about, you know, he's going to go and equate our harvest to the book of John or something. So therefore they named a lot of them and most of them, the moth names are utterly bonkers batshit mental. And they got funny little faces, a lot of moths and or some of them look like bird \*\*\*\* or twigs.
Callum McInerney-Riley: The Mother Shipton has got a winged pattern that looks like a witch's face.
Richard Negus: Correct. What's the Hebrew signs? It's called the Hebrew signs. It's like a Joe Rogan podcast. Yeah, the Hebrew signs, Hebrew signs there. No, it's a moth's name. Yeah, there's about 3 Hebrew signs because they think on the back says a symbol that looks like a Hebrew. letter, and there are things that as well, which I, or some of the eyed ones, and there's a the, eyed hawk moth, the eyed privet hawk moth, and that absolutely fantastic. But if you go and catch one, stop naming moths.
Callum McInerney-Riley: You can't tell me what to do.
Richard Negus: If you catch those things, Callum, honestly, and I've got a photograph of Charlie's hand when he was about 8, perhaps 7, something like that, with an eyed privet hawk moth on his hand. And it is the same width as his palm. And I took a little film of it and he could just hear his little voice in the back going, oh my God, because this is like holding something that's bigger than a wren. And you think, How have I not noticed that this thing is living in my garden? Because it sort of looks like it's got the wingspan of a Vulcan bomber. And there it is. And you only know it's there when you use a moth trap. And so I think there is this thing that looks like a toilet from a camper van. if you're getting one, you'll get all the doggers will be nodding you, go, no, I'm not one of you lot. I'm A motha, not a dogga. And yeah, get one because it's the best thing. It's the best thing. I'm a motha, not a dogga. It's like it's like I'm a lover, not a fighter, but more more plus dogs. I like these dusty in sticks.
Richard Prideaux: Hi, this is Richard from the Sidecountry Network and I am here to ask you for some help. Sidecountry is the non-profit organisation that produces this podcast and several others like it. We're an independent media organisation that is working to connect people with the British countryside and you can help us do that by signing up for our Patreon. If you have not supported a show on Patreon before, it's very simple. click on the link in the show notes for this episode or go to sidecountry.co.uk/support and follow the steps there. You can sign up for different levels and they start at just five pounds a month. In return, you'll get early access to all of the Sidecountry shows, some occasional bonus content, and all of the other perks you get from helping us out. You will also get that warm, fuzzy feeling knowing that you have done something to help connect the public to the countryside in all of its forms. So go to sidecountry.co.uk forward slash support or click on the link in the notes for this episode on your podcast player. And now back to the show. Whilst you've been talking, I've been looking it up. Mothophobia is the fear of moths or lepidopterophobia is the fear of moths and butterflies.
Richard Negus: Moths and butterflies.
Richard Prideaux: I'm only afraid of moths. And apparently it's the unpredictable and fluttering movement of moths often triggers panic or a feeling of losing control. That may well be it. I mean, also a moth killed my father in front of me while when I was 5.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Did he and did he float away?
Richard Prideaux: He went out to go and buy some milk when I was five, and she'll be back any day now, as long as I keep making a success of myself, right?
Richard Negus: I've met your mum. She did mutter something about, you know, your dad was snatched by moths. That's terrible.
Richard Prideaux: It's a terrible Cornish thing that happens. Well, there is an owl man of St Austell. And I'm not joking, there is a legend of the Owl Man of St. Austell.
Richard Negus: The Owl Man.
Richard Prideaux: Owl Man.
Richard Negus: See, they say this sort of stuff only happens actually down. You take the mickey out of Suffolk. But let's be perfectly honest. You've got, I mean, there is, there are very few. guidebooks and tourist tap books of the folklores of Suffolk. Yeah, if you go down to the southwest, I mean, hell, Dartmoor, it's got something that's thicker than bloody war and peace. It's like this thick, he says, holding a copy of William Cobbett's Rural Rides. It's ridiculously thick because there's all these things. Oh yeah, Nat Tor there. That's the reason why that looks like that is because, well, there was once been a time Miss Hunter with a great big cowl over his head and he would like gallop along there and then some other bloke came along. And it sounds like, I mean, all of these things need to be read in the voice of Vicky Pollard.
Richard Prideaux: It's also a giants can get blamed for a lot of things.
Richard Negus: Yes.
Richard Prideaux: Pixies. Well, knockers. You've got the knockers. So the knockers are the Cornish mind spirits. Okay. And they?
Callum McInerney-Riley: What? Mind spirit.
Richard Prideaux: So when you were in the tin mines, you'd hear this knocking noise.
Callum McInerney-Riley: I thought you meant like mind. Yeah.
Richard Prideaux: And they were, no, mine. Mine. Mine. They were spirits that warned you of impending collapse, or if you followed them, they would take you down towards the rich veins and down the tin mines. They've got the beast of Bodmin more, but that's mostly made-up.
Richard Negus: Yeah, it's I mean, have you got any sort of things around your way, Callum? Where I mean, if you got sort of, oh, don't go down there because you'll get, attacked by something.
Callum McInerney-Riley: No, we've got a great one. We've got a thing called Hangman Hill. So Hangman Hill is a place that you can, I think the legend is that people were hung there quite a lot. and you will place a car quite clearly going downhill and it will roll the opposite way.
Richard Negus: Really? Oh, why the out is this? Have you tried it out?
Callum McInerney-Riley: Yeah, I've tried it out and it worked. You can clearly see you're looking and the way the trees are and you're on Hangman Hill, you're looking and the car goes the opposite way. It goes up the hill.
Richard Prideaux: It's in mushrooms. Do you often find this in September? Sort of in September, just after.
Richard Negus: You've been on one of his, you've been in one of Predo's courses, and then you come back and your car starts rolling up.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Hangman here in Epping Forest. Yeah.
Richard Negus: Okay.
Callum McInerney-Riley: It's a ghost story of the 17th century executioner or highway that haunts the site and his spirit.
Richard Prideaux: How many cars were around in the 17th century?
Callum McInerney-Riley: Well, I mean, it probably would have worked for your horse and cart.
Richard Prideaux: The horses walking backwards up that hill, if.
Callum McInerney-Riley: You think they're right. They moonwalk, don't they? That's actually, it was said that Michael Jackson actually took the inspiration for the moonwalk from the horses of Hangman's Hill.
Richard Negus: That sounds brilliant. I mean, I have to say, there's round here we have, they say about the reed beds. They reckon that in there, if you hear the sighing of the reed beds and they say that's the moans of the people lost at sea. But the one I like best is Black Shuck. And Black Shuck is if you actually go to the place, one of the places that Richard thinks doesn't exist, which is Bungie or Blytheborough, a Blytheborough on the church door there. the Holy Trinity Church there, are these scratches, massive scratches and the burn marks on the door there. And they say that's where black shuck, which was Satan took the form of a large black dog and then was cast out by the vicar doing his sermon. And as they tried to get out, those are the marks of the thing there. And it's such a big thing that if you go into, I'm sure it's Bungie, Now there's actually the symbol on there is a black shuck, which is this demonic dog, which is supposed to, but that's really the two things. And we've already talked about in previous episodes about the green children of Woolpit. Oh yeah. But I mean, there's not that many, but it is something that strikes me that over on the West, you've got a lot a lot more folklore and blame it on the, is that because you drank stronger cider over there?
Richard Prideaux: It's possibly a sulphide issue, yes. I think also longer history because over on your side, every couple of 100 years, there was just everyone was wiped out by the invaders from across the sea and you started again from scratch. Or the bit you're standing on was actually just marsh and no one lived there. So there's nothing there. Whereas over here, a story gets passed down again and again. So there's a bit of woodland we look after, which it's called late, well, the bit through the end of it, it's called Lady Baggot's driveway. We're about to start a project there, trying to get sort of a living history of the place. And it's attached to, there's this big. stately home that ended up becoming a mental asylum. So it was a really interesting place. But this stately home just up the hill has a standing stone in the lawn, which was moved from the forest up on the hill. And this standing stone has got, it's got some Latin inscriptions, it's got some Ogam runes, and it's got some...
Richard Negus: Ogam runes? What are they?
Richard Prideaux: So they are... sort of a Brythonic rune and it was so it's not Norse, it's not Roman, it's not Latin, it's somewhere in between. But there's all these different runes from different time periods all on the same stone. So this stone is something that people have been graffiti on for centuries and centuries and centuries. And when you realize you've got people passing through the same place again and again, a story gets attached to that place. But I am firmly of the belief that you can get an a sort of an energy to a place that you're picking up on as a human. I think we talked about this before, but there's that bridge near Dumbarton where the dogs jump off the side. This is the, there's this bridge where you are warned to keep your dog on a lead because there's one bit on the right hand parapet where dogs jump off deep right down into the river below and you don't quite often die doing it. And there's been all these theories about why it was. This leading theory is that there's a smell of mink in the stones under the parapet. So dogs are going up there for this smell. Another theory is that it's something called infrasound. So in the same way you get infrared as being sort of spectrum of light just outside of our vision, there's infrasound, which is cause, which is very, very, very low frequency, which you can detect but can't quite perceive. So your body knows it's happening, but you can't hear it. And that's why some places feel spooky. And it's to do with the exact, like the residents of the water moving through there or the air moving through the trees and things. That's one theory for why epic forests feel so creepy. It might also be all those people who were murdered by the drug gang.
Callum McInerney-Riley: There's got to be so many people in there, so many, so much cash and stuff buried in epic forests. It's unreal.
Richard Negus: It's Epping Forest are fascinating. There's a book called The Keeper's Tale, which is written about one of the keepers of Epping Forest. And I think he wrote it in the late 1800s. And I mean, you know, we whinge now about youth coming out and doing mischief. It's just nothing but a bunch of people coming out of London and basically going to Epping Forest, which was this rural deal and just committing mayhem.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Oh yeah. I was there. It's great.
Richard Negus: Yes, your great, great, great, great grandfather was that kid killing red squirrels with a catapult and he talks about it. It's worth reading it. It's a, I've got it somewhere in the book collection and I'll give it to you because it's something which is on your doorstep, sort of.
Callum McInerney-Riley: There's also a myth and legend about The Essex Serpent.
Richard Negus: Oh yes, the Essex Serpent.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Yeah, They made a TV programme or series about it.
Richard Negus: Yeah, there was a book called The Essex Serpent. Yeah.
Callum McInerney-Riley: There's kind of a long history of believing some kind of water dragon existed in Beers, I think, which is sort of Suffolk, Essex border.
Richard Negus: Yeah.
Callum McInerney-Riley: There's quite a lot of those random stories that come up again and again. But it's funny how the sort of The legends die out, isn't it? There isn't, is there any, I suppose the modern equivalent of these legends, and part of me wants to believe, is panthers and big cats.
Richard Prideaux: Right, I'm reinvested now, go on.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Back in. Well, so we had for a long period, lots of cats going missing. by a train line. And this was a big train, not a little train.
Richard Negus: That's when Goldie came to visit, wasn't it? Yeah. Okay.
Callum McInerney-Riley: And loads of cats went missing.
Richard Prideaux: It's a cheery episode, this one.
Callum McInerney-Riley: The whole lots went missing and a lot of people decided that they were going to blame a potential panther. And there was loads of rumours, people had seen it. So Pishombury Park, which was a, it's quite a lot.
Richard Prideaux: The potential panther of Pisherbury Park.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Perfect. The potential panther. Well, Pisherbury Park. Haven't we got our episode title? Brilliant. So yeah, there was rumours of There's always rumours of like livestock going missing.
Richard Negus: Yeah.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Things like that and things like that. Guinea pigs. And so the cats went missing. That was a thing. People reported that they'd found claw marks on a tree and they were unlike anything else. Probably done with a pen knife. Probably someone trying to write. RN loves CN forever on the feet. But there was all this supposed evidence, but no one could get a camera phone out and record one properly. I've also heard people tell me that they have seen, I'm not revealing the sources, they have seen things through thermal scopes and through regular scopes early in the morning that are unexplained animals that they think could have been big cats. So, mic drop. Any more to add?
Richard Prideaux: Well, I know there's a WhatsApp group which is keepers and deer managers sharing video footage of dogging sites they found. Well, okay, round the table now, do you think there have been Two questions have been big cats at loose in the British countryside and are currently.
Richard Negus: Yes, I think there were. I think that there was the Dangerous Animals Act, which was something like the early 70s. And it was quite a cool thing for people in the swinging 60s who were like really cool guys to have big cats, but you had them as cubs. And so they were cool. And so you would sort of have them on the lead. And there's lots and lots of things. If you look at those Carnaby Street style photographs of these sort of doe-eyed beauties or some sort of Austin Powers, but not a pastiche, walking along with some sort of big cat. And then they brought in the Wild Animals Act. And there wasn't a sort of a record of all these people going into the police station in Stowe Market and saying, hello, I need to hand in this panther due to your new record. And I'm sure quite a number of people thinking, bloody hell, these wild boar are digging everything up and I'll let them go. And then he goes, I'm sorry, I'm just rewilding. But there, they were just sort of saying, oh, go on, go off, you'll be fine, you'll be able to go and hunt your own food. So I think there was.
Callum McInerney-Riley: I like to think of it like when in Hot Fuzz where he says, you go to the London and he's just sort of packs his panther off of a sort of a leg of lamb and just said, exactly, go on, run free, run free, you'll be fine.
Richard Negus: So I think there were, I think the ultimate story of are there any now? I think it's extremely unlikely. And I think the reason being is we've got a load of urban people who live in the countryside now and they go to pubs or they walk back from a drinks party at a mate of theirs and they look out and they see a muntjac or they see a roe deer and they go, bloody hell, look at the size of that. And it's silhouetted against the moon. And they remember because they're sort of middle-aged and they remember all these stories about the big cats and they go, yeah, I've definitely seen it. I've never seen anything like it. No, you've never seen anything like it because before You lived in Surbiton and so therefore the only wildlife you saw were pigeons and feral foxes. So therefore I reckon that's probably it is the drinks parties of people who don't come from round our way, seeing muntjac and roe deer and then \*\*\*\* their pants.
Richard Prideaux: What about you, Callum?
Callum McInerney-Riley: I reckon there probably were. I don't. I don't know if we have the wildlife availability to sustain such a creature.
Richard Negus: No, we do.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Not round my way for sure. Like I don't think that a cat's got to eat a fair bit of stuff and I think you'd probably see evidence of it in a lot of places. So in round my way, urban environments, absolutely not. I mean, how many other cats could it feasibly eat before it needs to start eating bigger things and would get spotted? Probably. It's like foxes round my way. They're like hanging out in front gardens. If you did release a load of wild cats, they'd probably domesticate themselves in about six months. And they'd be like, oh, come on, give us a bit of chicken. I know you're good for it. That's like KFC if you did it like that.
Richard Prideaux: Milling around outside the co-op.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Yeah, they'd just be, they'd be knocking about saying, come on, give us a fish. I know you've got one, mate. I'd be up the pond waiting for me.
Richard Negus: Yeah. What do you think? Do you think, have you got me in North Wales?
Richard Prideaux: There's all sorts of things. I think they definitely were out for a time. And I think the sort of, the stories of that carried on a lot longer. I think there's a possibility they still could be out there. It's easier for it to be a big cat out here, say, where there's big open spaces and lots of forests and lots of open upland and a lot of sheep.
Callum McInerney-Riley: Yeah, I mean, a sheep's going to sustain a big cat for a bit, right?
Richard Prideaux: And again, like I've talked about on the show before, I've seen things you people wouldn't believe, but one of the things I have seen is a sheep carcass up in a tree in a forest, which is like, okay, that's been dragged up there by an animal or a human and neither option is good. up in the middle of a natural resources Wales forest in the middle of nowhere in a spruce plantation. So there could be something out there. One of the arguments I've heard is that, well, there's so many people out now with thermal binoculars and scopes, or as my friend called them the other day, magical \*\*\*\*\* goggles. Which, you know, There's all record. There are basically fancy digital cameras so they can record, you'll see all this. I suspect if there are there, people might have seen that and thought, even if I share this with people, it's going to get laughed at. You know, it's going to be, I'm going to be a thing of ridicule. It's like seeing aliens or seeing a UFO. The sort of people who really talk about the UFOs are seen are the people who really want there to be UFOs. Same with big cats. There was a story a couple of years ago where it was the big cat DNA was found on our carcass, but it just happened to be investigated by the guy who's got the big cat podcast.
Callum McInerney-Riley: The big cat investigation society.
Richard Prideaux: Yeah. So you know, there's the vested interest there, but.
Richard Negus: How it's like old Johnny Kingdom down in the on Exmoor is that he used to make these rather dull films about the Exmoor, about the Devon and Somerset Stag Hounds. And they know about seven people used to buy him. He then made one film once about the big cats of Exmoor and boom, he suddenly was on TV. You couldn't move on in the 1990s for Johnny Kingdom films about wildlife on and down in the South West. because it was in his best interest. I'd like to finish this by saying, Callum and I probably in the course of our career together, how many keepers do you think we have interviewed and photographed, Callum?
Callum McInerney-Riley: At least three.
Richard Negus: At least three. So that's quite a lot. Maybe 10 lots is the answer. And I would say that the one thing, no, he's probably right. It'd probably be a put a zero on the end of that.
Callum McInerney-Riley: I dread to think how many.
Richard Negus: And the one thing we know about keepers is they will quite like to go and say, because they want to remind us that they are the apex predator, quite rightly because they are. And they'll tell you what they've killed. and I haven't had one and I have known and worked around and been friends with gamekeepers. I'm 55 years old and I should think probably I've known them for 55 years and I have not had one say shot bloody great big black panther the other day and not one. So I have to say is that the apex predator in the UK is the gamekeeper. And I have not yet found one. I'm not saying obviously I haven't met them all, but I have not yet found one who said that they have killed a big cat. They've killed lots of things, but they have not killed a big cat. So I think the probability is they were there no more.
Richard Prideaux: You'd be off ticket though if you did kill it.
Richard Negus: Yeah, you ain't going to put it on the jibbit. No.
Richard Prideaux: And I think that's a good time to bring the main show over to an end and we'll go over to the after show.
Richard Negus: Hurrah.
Richard Prideaux: We could talk about the Chester Zoo and their child predator tours. Goodbye everyone.
Richard Negus: Goodbye.