Tommy Mischke (17:40)
That lush, thick red coat and tail against the white powdery snow. And number two, because this creature was being so elusive, I felt nature was offering me a challenge. Try and See this animal, fella? It clearly doesn't want you to see it. But you're smarter. You're human. Find a way to see it. I thought of setting up motion cameras, but that wasn't the kind of seeing I wanted to do. I wanted to see it in person, in daylight. Not some figure passing a motion camera in the darkness. But to bring it out of its den in the sunshine. I would need to trick it. Or so I read. Yes, read. I found an old book at a thrift store in a nearby small town and. And it passed along. If you want to see a red fox during the day, this is what you should do. Go to a snowy area near the den of the fox. Bring a white sheet with two holes cut in it for eyes. Bring a tape recorder and a cassette tape of a baby rabbit in pain. Now, remarkably, you could buy cassette tapes back then of baby rabbits in pain, kind of squealing. This must have been for hunters or something, I don't know. Anyway, I got a hold of this tape and I got my tape player and my sheet and. And what I was instructed to do was go under the sheet in the snowy area with my tape recorder, be real quiet, play the recording of the baby rabbit in pain and sit there looking through the holes in the sheet in the direction of the fox den, waiting for the fox to emerge from the den. And they swore the fox would emerge because it would know that its prey was wounded and weak. Folks, I want to tell you something. I sat there in the cold in a snow pile covered with a sheet like some freakin Klansman playing that squealing sound over and over again. The sound of a baby rabbit in pain for two hours on a cold January afternoon before realizing this was the most absurd use of my time ever devised. Ice fishing looked flat out profound in comparison. It appeared utterly intelligent and enlightening compared to the embarrassment that was me sitting beneath that sheet along that riverbank. All of a sudden the humiliation just washed over me. No fox was coming out of any den. And this strange little book that I had found might as well have been a book of practical jokes. I had been dup. Five 32 of an inch. Five 32nds of an inch. A fellow passed this along to me many years ago in a saloon. 5 32nds of an inch. I was a young man and this wise old soul was passing along a fraction that all Minnesotans need to memorize.5 32 of an inch. The depth of tread you at least better have on those tires before driving on Snow. It's a fraction that goes with nothing else. Nothing. Google it. You'll come up with Nothing but tire info. 5 32nds of an inch. People in Texas don't know what on earth that fraction is all about. They're not using that fraction down there for anything. That's a Minnesota fraction right there. 532 of an inch. And let's see what other numbers you need to memorize in Minnesota in the wintertime. How about 1101110 1. A Canadian gave us this one smart fella, a doctor, Dr. Gordon Giesbrecht. You know why we need the good doctor? To help us address another annual ritual in the north country. The inevitable falls through the ice. In this land of over 11,000 frozen lakes and several thousand more frozen ponds and 70,000 miles of rivers and streams every year, without fail, we read these headlines. Here we go. Sartel man in critical coma after falling through thin ice. Fisherman falls through ice in Watertown. Man dies after ATV falls through ice in Aiken County, Minnesota. Man dies after snowmobile goes through thin ice. Pickup truck falls through ice at Grays Bay in Minnetonka. Third angler in two days falls through ice. Pair rescued after utility vehicle falls through the ice. Growing up in Minnesota, this too is part of the culture year after year. You can count on it. Well, you know what the good doctor does on our behalf? I've seen him hurl himself onto thin ice so as to purposely break through. He cross country skis onto thin ice so as to intentionally bust through the thin clear floor below him and become immersed in that godless water. He's even purposely taken a snowmobile onto ice and hit open water just to fall in and figure out how best to handle the situation. He goes in so we don't have to, and he's the man who gave us 110 1. You put that in your memory banks next to 5, 32 of an inch. 110 1. Ready. When you go into that icy water, take the first minute just to get your breathing under control. The body will allow you to do that, but it'll take about a minute. You, you need to focus on calming the breath and nothing else. Forget trying to get out. The first minute is for calming that involuntary gasping that the cold water has produced. If you don't do that, you could drown. The next number, 1010 is how many minutes you have to use your limbs before your muscles will become absolutely useless. You have 10 minutes to get yourself out of there. And the last digit one is for one hour. You have a solid hour before you will lose consciousness from hypothermia. And that's significant. There is time to be rescued. Even if you can't get yourself out in those first 10 minutes, you will not die right away. Let's now go to our freezing cold doctor currently in the icy water on a frozen lake.
