Lulu Miller: Three, two, one …

(Mysterious forest music plays, a little twinkle in the night, like the opening to a Halloween movie.)

Amanda Thomson: Imagine you’re standing in the middle of a forest. Your arms break off.

(Crunch, crack! There go your arms)

Amanda: And your insides hollow out.

(The wind moves through you, all empty now!)

Lulu: Your skin turns hard and rough.

Amanda: Humans think of you as being dead, like a ghost.

(A werewolf-like howl echoes somewhere behind you. But then, as Amanda and Lulu continue, the music becomes less haunted, and werewolves give way to the gentle sing-song of bugs and birds in conversation with one another.)

Lulu: But the birds and insects and rodents know the truth about you.

Amanda: Inside, you are brimming with life.

Lulu: You birth babies.

Amanda: You fight fire.

Lulu: You can even catch time.

(Tick-tock, tick-tock! A clock rings in a new hour.)

Lulu: You have become …

Amanda: A stump.

(A triangle dings, signaling that it is time for the theme song!)

Lulu: (Laughingly.) Now is the part where I make you sing the theme song with me!

Amanda: Oh god. Okay.

Songbud Alan Goffinski and Lulu: (Over the theme music.) Terrestrials, terrestrials, we are not the worst. We are the–

Amanda: Best?

Songbud Alan: (Finishing the song.) Bestrials!

Lulu: Yeah, you got it! (Amanda laughs softly.)

Lulu: Terrestrials is a show where we uncover the strangeness waiting right here on earth. I am your host, Lulu Miller, joined as always by my songbud–

(Songbud Alan hoots a hello.)

Lulu: –Alan!

Songbud Alan: (Singing intensely over heavy metal guitars.) It’s the Stumpisode!

Lulu: This season, we are looking at things that are usually …

Songbud Alan: (Excitedly echoing, but hushed.) Overlooked! [A moment.] Shh!

Lulu: And today’s guide through the wild world of tree stumps is Scottish artist and writer and tree expert, Amanda Thomson.

Amanda: I don't see myself as being an expert on trees. [Lulu laughs in a bouncy, excitable way.] Maybe more a lover of trees. 

(New forest music enters, led by a marimba, a larger, lower xylophone, warm and slow.)

Lulu: Now, Amanda grew up like most of us, not really noticing stumps. Or, if she did, noticing what they weren’t.

Amanda: Trees are for climbing, aren't they?

Lulu: Can’t build a treehouse in a stump. Can’t get shade from a stump.

Amanda: No!

Lulu: So stumps seemed like broken things, sad things, dead things.

(The music fades out after one final note.)

Lulu: Until one day she happened across a stump that would cast a sort of spell on her.

(Fairytale music kicks in.)

Lulu: A spell that would make her see these quiet, dead-seeming stumps, completely differently.

Amanda: They don't look like they're doing anything, but they're doing so much.

Lulu: Alright. So, like most good fairy tales, this one begins in the woods–the deep dark woods of Scotland. 

(The fairytale music is replaced with a winding fiddle song and the sound of footsteps in the hay.)

Lulu: Amanda is staying in a friend’s cottage, taking care of the chickens [A chicken murmurs a chicken hello.] and one day she decides to go for a walk in the ancient pines.

(More footsteps.)

Lulu: She wanders deeper and deeper into the dark until suddenly a stump catches her eye.

(The fiddle slowly fades out, to be replaced by a mournful violin, a ray of light in the dark of the woods.)

Amanda: It was very pale. A lot of the bark had fallen off of it, so it was almost silver.

Lulu: It was a kind of stump called a snag, where part of the tree still stands, but it’s hollow inside.

Amanda: All of the upper branches had snapped.

Lulu: And as she studied its kinda-spooky form, the giant stump began casting its spell.

(A sprinkling of fairy dust adds magic to the sound landscape–the soundscape.)

Amanda: I just started to notice all these dead trees in the middle of all the life that was going on.

Lulu: And without really knowing why, she got out her camera and began …

(The snap of a camera.)

Lulu: Taking pictures!

(Snap, snap!)

Amanda: They’re almost like skeletons.

Lulu: Can you say any more about what drew you to them at the beginning?

Amanda: I was just drawn to their difference.

Lulu: She [A meaningful pause.] related to that feeling.

Amanda: So, when I was growing up, I was about the only Black kid in a small town. I had such a lovely childhood, but there's moments where you are made to feel different, you know, and you experience racism. And, whether it's intentional or unintentional, you still feel it.

Lulu: Hmm.

Amanda: So when I was starting to look at the dead trees and trying to think about what they meant for me …

Lulu: They reminded her a little of her, and she wanted to extend a kind of care to them that she didn’t always get as a kid.

Amanda: There’s a lot of kindness that comes when people start to understand the value of difference and what difference can contribute, if that makes sense.

Lulu: (Humming in agreement.) Hmm. 

Lulu: And so …

(Another snap as the music changes tone: hopeful, open notes dissolve into the air all around as Amanda takes more pictures.)

Lulu: She kept spending time with these dead trees, trying to get to know them by taking pictures of them.

Amanda: They’re beautiful shapes …

Lulu: And [Scribbling away.] drawing them.

Amanda: Made some films.

Lulu: –Of dead trees. Etchings of dead trees. Sound recordings of, you guessed it:

Amanda: Dead trees. 

(Lulu laughs, seeing the pattern.)

Lulu: But her understanding of the value of stumps really clicked in when she started following scientists on walks through the woods. They peeled back the bark, so to speak, and showed her just how many–

(Anticipating Amanda’s words, a bird twitters a sweet song.)

Amanda: –Different beasties that are there.

Lulu: Beasties like beetles and wasps and mushrooms and flies!

(The buzzing of a fly–a hum of life.)

Amanda: They hold so much life within them.

Lulu: The scientists taught her there is a whole class of creatures that need stumps to live. They’re what’s called …

Amanda: Saproxylic.

Lulu: Saproxylic?

Amanda: Uh-huh.

(Lifey sounds buzz their way in.)

Lulu: Fungi slurp up crucial nutrients like a wood smoothie.

(Slurp!)

Lulu: Wasps chew up the deadwood to make nests.

(Nom nom nom!)

Lulu: Beetles lay their babies inside.

Beetle: (Buzzing.) Night night.

Lulu: And some stumps break apart to reveal whole new worlds.

(A big CRUNCH as the bark splits.)

Amanda: Sometimes in the holes, like, you can get water as well, so that creates another micro-habitat.

Lulu: Uck–[Laughing suddenly.] like a little pool, a little pond in the dead tree.

Amanda: Yeah! (Lulu laughs.)

Lulu: And while wasps or beetles might sound kind of annoying–

(A fly buzzes by.)

Lulu: –Without them you’d lose pollinators, and little magicians that turn rot into crucial nutrients for the forest floor–and you’d lose food!

(A satisfying crunch, like a bite into a stick of celery.)

Lulu: Crunchy snacks for bigger creatures! In short, without stumps and deadwood, the forest ecosystem would pretty quickly collapse.

(The music cuts out.)

Amanda: Studies reckon that a healthy forest needs 30% deadwood in order to be a healthy forest.

Lulu: Woah, that is so much of the forest!

Amanda: Absolutely.

(Uptempo electronic music begins to play in anticipation of the adventure!)

Lulu: But Amanda was just getting started. She would go on to spend the next 20 years studying stumps.

Amanda: Yeah!

Lulu: And is now going to take us on a Tour de Stumps, a world tour road trip of stumps doing things I would never dream they could: Saving lives, creating cities, and even changing the sky.

(Caw, caw!)

Amanda: That's brilliant, isn't it?

Lulu: The tour departs the station …

(Train whistle.)

Lulu: … Right after this short break!

(The break.)

Lulu: Terrestrials is back. And I am lacin’ up my hiking boots for a [Adopting a French accent] “Tour de Stumps”: three stumps hidden on our planet that aren’t famous, but totally should be.

Amanda: Uh-huh.

Lulu: That’s our stump lover, Amanda Thomson.

Lulu: Okay, Amanda, where are you taking us for stump one?

Amanda: We're going to Illinois.

Lulu: Rural Illinois! 

(The sound of wind rushing around a car in motion.)

Lulu: To meet a stump that changed the sky!

Lulu: I’m somewhere in southern Illinois. I'm looking out at a bunch of windmills, just … (Lulu hums softly to herself.)

Lulu: Once Amanda revealed the location, I hopped in my car and drove for hours.

Lulu: (Driving.) A lot of fields.

Lulu: Through flat, kinda dry-looking industrial bean farms and corn farms. Until … !

Lulu: Oh!

Lulu: I turned off onto a little dirt road, to meet with a firefighter. 

Lulu: (To Tyler Funk.) Hey, it's great to meet you.

Lulu: Named Tyler Funk who, well, discovered this stump.

Lulu: (To Tyler Funk.) So we are approaching stump. 

Tyler Funk: We're close. 

(Footsteps crunch through plants at the end of their season.)

Lulu: We walk for a while on the mud and sprouts of a bean farm, until …

Lulu: Yeah, it's kind of gnarled and almost black–really dark brown.

(Music.)

Lulu: We reach a huge stump. It’s up to my shoulders.

Lulu: It's very typical, like, pretty flat-top. [Lulu pats the stump.] Little bit of bird poop on it. (She laughs lightly.)

Lulu: Now, Tyler, like Amanda, didn’t think he cared about stumps! He was more into …

Lulu: That’s a lot of birding gear!

Tyler: Yeah.

Lulu: Do you have binocs?

Lulu: Birding! 

Tyler: They’re in here.

Lulu: Oh woah, yeah, those are big ones! Cool!

(Tyler and Lulu keep talking, but their conversation fades as Lulu-in-the-present narrates.)

(Cheesy nature documentary music plays.)

Lulu: On his way to the fire station many mornings, he would get up early and pull off on the side of the road to quietly observe little birds coming out of the brush, like …

Tyler: Sparrows!

Songbud Alan: (Adopting a posh British voice, delicate and very nasal.) And sweet little warblers and finches, flitting about in their natural habitat.

Lulu: And then, one day in 2010, he saw something very out of place.

(A hardcore guitar riff plays. Something very heavy metal is on its way!)

Lulu: A prairie falcon! Now, allow me a brief aside to tell you how prairie falcons are the goblins of the sky.

(A resounding “caw” echoes out in perfect time with the music: the sound of a prairie falcon!)

Lulu: Most raptors shoot down from above and grab their prey in their talons. But a prairie falcon …

(A rush of wind as the falcon dives down.)

Tyler: It’s going so fast and it punches something with its fists and it can just–I don't want to be morbid–but it can just basically disintegrate– 

(Poof! In a quick motion, the falcon’s target becomes a cloud of dust!)

Tyler: –You know, what it hits!

Lulu: Oh, so it doesn't grab, it just punches?

Tyler: Yes. It's just like hitting it with a hammer.

Lulu: Woah.

(Woosh!)

Lulu and Songbud Alan: Gnarly!

(One last lick of music and it cuts out.)

Lulu: Now, for Tyler’s half a century of birding, he had never seen a prairie falcon in Illinois before. Those birds preferred the American West, where there were tons of jagged cliffs and boulders off of which they could perch and hunt prey.

So, for years, Tyler and some other birders kept scanning the sky, wondering if they’d see it again. And every now and then over the years, they did. And slowly, carefully, they tracked it to its home base, which was …

Songbud Alan: (Over trumpet fanfare, using a goofy bird-voice.) Doo-doo-doo!

Lulu: This stump.

(Pat-pat-pat. Lulu pats the stump. Yep! That stump.)

Lulu: This huge tree stump in the middle of a farmer’s field.

(Soft pan flute music plays a loop, moving up and down, up and down.)

Lulu: In the early mornings, Tyler would sit in his car near the stump and, like magic, the falcon–so rarely seen in these parts–would appear from the sky.

Tyler: You could just watch him stretching his wings, you know, yawning.

Lulu: And … hunting. The stump made the perfect perch for the falcon to scan for prey.

Tyler: Oh yeah.

Lulu: Tyler was amazed by the stump. But he had, you know … fires to fight. So, he asked the farmer if he could set up a camera so he could monitor the stump 24/7. And that’s when things got even weirder–because it wasn’t just a falcon coming.

Tyler: (Many different thoughts all mix together in this sentence.) I have footage of a snowy owl sitting on the stump, raptors, kestrels, Cooper’s Hawk, red-tailed hawk, rough-legged hawk …

Lulu: Woah.

Lulu: And it didn’t stop there.

Tyler: Coyotes, uh, have been up there. So they've had a pretty good jump to get up there. I think I've had a skunk up there, a weasel, a mink, rats, possums, and there's mice that come out and crawl around on that stump.

Lulu: It was almost like a fairytale where the stump was a kind of magnet that pulled rare beasts from the sky and below.

Tyler: Actually this winter I had a bobcat on top of that.

Lulu: (Stunned.) What?!

Tyler: Yeah. Yeah, I really didn't expect to see that. (He laughs lightly.)

(With the twinkle of a windchime, the music fades out. As Lulu speaks, a western ambience, sparse and spare, plucks guitar strings slowly, deliberately. Crickets enter in.)

Lulu: Tyler’s theory is that those huge, flat, bean-and-corn farms in southern Illinois … Well, as much food as they might produce for us, they don’t have much to offer the other critters of the earth.

Tyler: We're looking at basically scarred earth that’s–all you can see is dirt. There’s–there's really no, uh, biodiversity out here.

Lulu: Huh, so it’s kind of like a desert out here?

Tyler: I–I think actually a desert probably has better biodiversity [Lulu laughs.] than this does, to be honest with you.

Lulu: It's worse than a desert. Okay.

Tyler: (Laughing alongside Lulu.) It's worse than a desert, yeah.

Lulu: But the stump, in its way, is bringing life back. Its wood feeds bugs, which attract rodents, which hide in the roots, which attract bobcats and coyotes and even those rare raptors, which are now darkening the sky with wings that hadn’t been seen in decades.

(Another prairie falcon cry rings out alongside a wind chime.)

Lulu: Which is why Tyler–and others–now call it:

Tyler and Amanda: (In unison.) The magic stump.

(A beat.)

Lulu: Okay, so that was stump number one. Amanda, where’s the next stump on our tour?

Amanda: We are going to Buckhannon, West Virginia.

Lulu: (Singing the song “Country Roads Take Me Home”.) West Virginia! [Amanda chuckles in response.] Uh, and now, apparently, we are gonna up the ante. We’re gonna meet a stump that’s not just a hotel for rodents and birds and coyotes …

Amanda: Humans.

Lulu: (Audibly surprised.) Humans?

Amanda: Yeah.

Ana: So we're walking across a field, kind of like a soccer field. There's a little river to our right.

Lulu: We sent the songbud Alan and producer Ana to go check it out.

Ana: There it is! [Songbud Alan chuckles.] Straight ahead is this large–

Songbud Alan: –Big, wiry–

Ana: –Wiry, white?

(Ana and Songbud Alan make the inter-Terrestrial sign for stump: a “pat pat”.)

Songbud Alan: I love how this tree looks. Like, it looks old. 

Lulu: Alright, so we are gonna roll back to the 1700s. The forest was dense with ancient oaks and spruces and maples.

(Wandering marimba music plays.)

Gene Thorn: And it was the absolute wilderness. Huge trees.

Lulu: This is Gene Thorn, a wildlife biologist who is probably the world expert on this one particular stump.

Gene: Yeah! (Gene laughs.)

Lulu: And the story goes that running through the forest were two brothers–

(Heavy breathing and heavy footsteps.)

Lulu: –Who were trying to escape. Now this was way back before the United States was a country and the British were trying to colonize the land. And those two brothers were scouts in the British Army, but they didn’t want to fight anymore. So they’d abandoned their posts and ran into the forest as fugitives.

(More heavy breathing.)

Lulu: And as they ran, they were looking for a place to hide from–

Gene: –Copperheads, rattlesnakes, mountain lions–

(A roar.)

Lulu: –And, of course, the British Army! They would be in huge trouble–[Whispering, an aside.] like, executed trouble–if they were caught. And one day, these brothers–

Gene: –Sam and John Pringle– 

Lulu: –They ran to the banks of a river.

(Alongside the riverbank, they stop to catch their breath. The water flows smoothly)

Lulu: And they saw–

(An angelic choir intones the sound of something amazing.)

Gene: Well, that's where they found the hollow sycamore tree.

Lulu: A massive hollow stump with bright white bark.

Gene: It was over 11 foot high, 11 foot wide. It's the size of a bedroom in an apartment.

Lulu: Wow!

Lulu: So, tentatively, they climbed inside.

Songbud Alan: (Climbing in, bark crunching underfoot.) I can't believe how deep that goes.

Ana: I can't believe you're standing up right now.

Songbud Alan: Oh, easy, too! Like, I've got–I can put my arms straight up in the air and I am not touching the top.

Lulu: And they liked it! It was warm, cozy.

Ana: (Sniffing loudly.) It smells like a fresh forest floor.

Songbud Alan: Yeah, well, it is.

Lulu: So! They decided to move in … And almost immediately began tricking out their stump.

(Goofy, bouncy TV show theme music music.)

Ana: (Dramatically, as the host of the MTV show Cribs.) Welcome to MTV Cribs: Stumps Edition!

Songbud Alan: (As an MTV Cribs co-host.) Today we got the Pringle brothers.

Ana: Let’s check out– 

Both: –This stump! 

(Both continue this way, really hamming it up.)

Songbud Alan: First we got the beds!

Ana: A mattress made of leaves! 

(Crinkle, crunch.)

Ana: Layers of fur hides! 

Songbud Alan: Fuzzy!

Gene: (Explaining calmly, not in the style of the Cribs intro.) They used their hides for blankets.

Songbud Alan: Mad cozy!

Ana: And check out this door!

(Creaks.)

Gene: … Made out of bark!

Songbud Alan: Custom-made!

Gene: Tanned skins to keep the winter weather out and so forth.

Songbud Alan: Yo, and no stump is complete without a lit fireplace! 

(Ana laughs at the tongue-in-cheek use of the word “lit” as the fire crackles.)

Songbud Alan: For cooking up gamey stew!

Ana: Ooh! But [Now coughing.]–but where’s all that smoke gonna go?

Gene: A little opening at the top where the smoke went up and out. It's just like a chimney. 

Songbud Alan and Ana: See ya next time. 

(Cribs sound design ends.)

Lulu: (Laughing.) Wait, but, so–if you were to, like, walk through the forest and you come across this giant 11-foot tall stump, and there'd be, like, a little–a little trail of smoke coming out the top?

Gene: Yeah. So you'd have a smoky smell.

Lulu: Okay, I'm picturing them in there. They've got, like, meat jerky hanging on the [Chuckling.] walls. Are wolves and bears and other critters not drawn to that smell?

Gene: Now that's a really interesting question!

(A bear growls ferociously.)

Lulu: Because apparently one day a bear did attack!

(The bear keeps growling as dramatic music begins–the chase!) 

Lulu: Well, after Sam had tried to shoot it.

Gene: He had big, red eyes, and there were these snarls of saliva coming out of his mouth.

Lulu: Gene, it turns out, is also a historical reenactor who will sometimes dress up as Sam Pringle and tell the legend of the bear attack as though he was Sam himself.

Gene: (Reenacting, as Sam.) So I drew my knife out, and by that time, he had hit me and got me down on the ground, and he was chewing on me.

(In the background, Songbud Alan makes struggling sounds.)

Lulu: (Listening intently, as though Gene really was Sam.) Oooh!

Gene: And I sunk that knife behind his shoulder. And I blacked out right then.

(A beat as the music cuts out.)

Lulu: A few hours later …

Gene: (As Sam.) John, he found me [Songbud Alan, playing John, shouts out, “Samuel!”] laying on the ground and he had to ca–literally carry me down off of the hill and into our tree. And he laid me down and put a blanket on me and tucked me up.

Lulu: Good brother, John.

Gene: (As Sam.) Great brother.

(Mysterious forest music begins again, this time with a foggy sound.)

Lulu: Sam’s little brother knew he was going to have to hike hundreds of miles to the nearest town to find supplies. So, he left Sam there all winter long [Songbud Alan, as Sam, shivers.] vulnerable, aching, the snow swirling outside–protected by the stump. And after months …

Gene: (As Sam.) I was running out of food. It was getting critical.

Lulu: But then, one glorious day …

(The forest song gives way to another angelic choir.)

Gene: (As Sam.) Back over the mountains, here came John, and he was refreshed with good news: The war was over! And so the British army was no longer looking for us.

Lulu: So, they were safe to move to a nearby town. Sam got married, they moved into a house, but after just a little bit of time, he realized he missed his stump! So he convinced his wife and some friends to return!

Gene: (Back as Gene again.) Pioneers came over the mountain with ‘em. And they all lived in that tree ‘til they got their cabins built. 

Lulu: Wow!

Gene: So there were several families actually that lived in there for a time period. 

Lulu: (As if telling Gene to slow down.) Woah. So, like, how many people do you think in that one stump? 

Gene: About 10 to 12 people that would have been inside there. Yeah.

Lulu: Oh, that's a tight pack. (She laughs at the thought, and so does Gene. Sardines in a big tree tin!)

Lulu: The stump sheltered them as Sam Pringle and his friends built cabin after cabin, which would eventually turn into the city of Buckhannon, which now has over 5,000 people. And alongside the river that flows through the town is a park where the stump used to be. And right near it is a hollow sycamore tree that they've named the Pringle Tree!

Ana: All right, pass me a Pringle, Pringle.

Songbud Alan: All right, we are in the Pringle tree and we are eating–

Ana: –Pringles.

Songbud Alan: Pringles! Cheers.

Ana: Cheers.

(The two crunch their potato chips loudly.)

Ana: They taste better in the tree.

Songbud Alan: (Agreeing.) They taste better in the tree. They sound better in the tree.

Ana: Mhm!

(An even bigger crunch! Then, it gets remixed, looped, and repeated until it becomes too hard to recognize.)

(A beat. Time for a new stump stop!)

Lulu: Alright. We have visited the magic stump that changed the sky, the Pringle stump that birthed a city–Amanda, where are we going for our final stump stop?

Amanda: We're going to Wales.

(Stormy ocean sounds roar as bells clang.)

Lulu: Wales, a small seaside nation in the UK, where, in 2014, a mighty tempest rolled through. There was wind and fog and lightning. 

(The storm darkens audibly.)

Lulu: The waves swelled high into the sky.

Amanda: Very choppy.

Lulu: But when the storm finally passed …

(The storm calms suddenly. Eerie music lays a foundation for a mysterious story.)

Amanda: There arose from the water all these mysterious structures.

Lulu: Dozens of black pointy–

Amanda: –Protrusions that looked like shark's fins.

Lulu: But upon closer inspection …

Amanda: It turned out they were stumps.

Lulu: Ha!

Amanda: Petrified snags and stumps. 

Lulu: Petrified, meaning hardened–

Amanda: (Giving another meaning.) Fossilized!

Lulu: –Into this forest of preserved deadwood, poking out from the sea.

(Waves enter as the music fades away.)

Lulu: People came from all over to wander through these ghost trees, and as they did, they noticed that in the fossilized dirt, there were …

Amanda: Human footprints of children and adults–

Lulu: –From more than 5,000 years ago!

Amanda: Scientists analyzed the footprints and learned that this area, which was deep underwater, used to be a human civilization.

(A brief beat of music, old-timey and whimsical.)

Lulu: And the wild part is, this scientific data held in the stumps echoed an ancient legend from Wales: A sort of local fairytale about a great town that was swallowed up by the ocean! 

(The sound of waves creates a bed of sound under string music.)

Lulu: Now, no one really knew if that story was true or not. But the stumps offered up a pretty good guess!

Amanda: I think there's a lot of histories if you start to pay attention to looking at a tree and–and what you see in them.

Lulu: Hmm.

(Toot toot!)

Lulu: Well, that concludes Amanda's “Tour de Stumps”!

Amanda: It’s just been so lovely spending time talking about stumps with you, Lulu!

Lulu: Ah, it’s been the best! And that was only three stumps out of all the stumps you’ve written about, out of all the stumps on the planet!

Amanda: Yeah!

Lulu: There are also redwood stumps that kind of fight forest fire with their special thick bark, and "stumps that shelter baby bats like woody nurseries,” and a stump in Tanzania that keeps shooting out new life!

Amanda: (She laughs, thinking about so many stumps.) Yeah!

Lulu: And there are probably so many other secrets and powers waiting in the dead-looking parts of the forest! 

Amanda: (Laughs.) Absolutely. I’m still learning.. I haven't finished yet, but I don't know where I'm gonna go next.

(Time for a new Stump Song!)

Baby Voice: (Singing and spelling.) S-T-U-M-P! 

S-T-U-M-P!

S-T-U-M-P! 

S-T-U-M-P!

Echoed Baby Voice: S-T-U-M-P baby!

S-T-U-M-P baby!

S-T-U-M-P baby!

S-T-U-M-P baby!

Songbud Alan: If you’re a stump or a snag, a fabulous dead wood

You make me glad the way only a stump could

I know there’s more to you than meets the eye

No lie, you sure got me mystified.

I try to get to the root of it, oh. 

I’m out on a limb, I can’t leaf it alone.

Hot shot I wanna know what ya got.

Dead wood, aha!

I’m gonna watch ya rot.

Baby Voice: (Singing and spelling.) S-T-U-M-P! 

S-T-U-M-P!

S-T-U-M-P! 

S-T-U-M-P!

Songbud Alan: One and two, tree, four. Hard-core arbor.

A tree corpse on the forest floor.

Check out the stump. [Echoed.] Thump thump.

That’s what I’m looking for.

They say you’re dead wood

But I think you’re kinda not

Because you’re full of life

Yeah you’re so alive 

What more could anybody want from the

One and only S-T-U-M-P!

Baby Voice: (Singing and spelling.) S-T-U-M-P! 

S-T-U-M-P!

S-T-U-M-P! 

S-T-U-M-P!

Echoed Baby Voice: S-T-U-M-P baby!

S-T-U-M-P baby!

S-T-U-M-P baby!

S-T-U-M-P baby!

Songbud Alan: (Continuing over the layered baby voices, some of them chanting out as if cheering him along!) Stumpy stumpy stump stump.

Stumpy stumpy stump stump.

Stumpy stumpy stump stump.

Stumpy stumpy stump stump [Extra deep] STUMP.

Lulu: A-L-A-N Goffinski! [Chuckles lightly] Alan Goffinski, everyone, bringing down the house with the materials that make the house: the wood, the stumps, the planks, the snags! And that’s it! That is it for today, nothing else cool about to happen–

(Suddenly, out of nowhere, trumpets … well, uh, trumpet! It’s The Badgers!)

Lulu: (Whispered.) What's that?

Badger #1: Excuse me, I have a question. 

Badger #2: Me too. 

Badger #3: Me three. 

Badger #4: Me four. 

Lulu: (Whispered, but somehow loudly.) The Badgers.

(The Badgers theme song plays underneath the questions.)

Lulu: Listeners with badgering questions for the expert. Are you ready? 

Amanda: Yeah!

Joe: Hey, my name is Joe! I’m 29 years old. My question is: Does the stump know that the rest of the tree is gone? 

Amanda: That's quite sad. And quite existential. Maybe it's just living its own moment.

Elise: My name is Elise, I’m six years old. Can trees get band aids for snags? 

Amanda: You're gonna have to ask a scientist about that question.

Lulu: Okay! Gene?

Gene: Yeah, they can. There's people that make a living–they call themselves tree surgeons.

Lulu: Huh!

Gene: And if you get a broken branch off you can actually go and wrap it up with a Band-Aid.

Lulu: Wow!

Gene: And kind of a tar-y-like substance goes underneath to keep the moisture from getting inside and causing rot.

Lulu: Wow! I wonder if tree surgeons have to take a hippocratic oak. (Gene and Lulu laugh at the corny–but clever!–wordplay on a doctor or nurse’s “hippocratic oath,” or promise.)

Siya: Hi! My name is Siya. I’m 12 years old. My question is: Do bears scratch themselves on dead wood, or only on trees that are alive? 

Gene: For the most part, they choose live trees.

Lulu: Huh!

Gene: They're getting rid of their winter coat, so they'll rub up and down the tree–

(Sound of scratching.)

Gene: –And take that fur off.

(“Ohh,” goes the bear!) 

Gene: The other thing that happens, trying to rub and get ticks dislodged and off of themselves.

(Sound of scratching as the bear groans.)

Gene: And there's been some recent research that the oils of off pine tree resin are actually a tick repellent.

Lulu: Smart! Ha!

(The bear sighs, as if relieved.)

Mark: Hi! My name is Mark. I’m 33 years old. And I’m joined by Sophie and Cindy, ages 5 and 2. And we’d like to know: Why do we say we are stumped when we run into a question we can't answer?

Amanda: Hmm. Is it because of the shape of the stump? You can't see the–kind of a way to branch off–

Lulu: (As if groaning, catching the tree joke.) Ehhh!

Amanda: –Into your thinking? [Lulu laughs.] I have been stumped! (Both chuckle.)

Lulu: Well, that is the most perfect place to leave it. 

(Pat-pat–the stump sound! As the episode wraps up, ethereal, cloud-like music floats up softly.)

Lulu: Biggest thanks again to Amanda Thomson. If you would like to read her beautiful writing, check out her book, Belonging. There is a lot in there about tree stumps, other overlooked things, and people. And it’s got a gorgeous painting of a hollow stumpy snag on the front. Again, that’s Belonging, by Amanda Thomson.

Terrestrials was created by me, Lulu Miller with WNYC Studios. This episode was produced by Ana González, Mira Burt-Wintonick, Alan Goffinski, Joe Plourde, and me, with help from Tanya Chawla, Sarah Sandbach, Valentina Powers. Fact-checking by Natalie Middleton.

Support for Terrestrials is provided by the Simons Foundation, the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, the Kalliopeia Foundation, and the John Templeton Foundation.

(Shouting out as if a sports announcer.) Thank youuu!

Also–wanted to give a big shout to the documentary, The Magic Stump. That is how I learned about Tyler Funk’s stump–[Singing.] Tyler Funk’s stump! Mrreow!–in Illinois. It’s a great documentary. Bob Dolgan is the filmmaker. You should go watch it. See all the raptors and beasts and humans that, you know, come pay homage to this stump. That, again, is called The Magic Stump.

(A beat.)

Lulu: Finally, teachers, we have free–free, free, free teaching materials on our website that go along with many of the episodes. We worked with PBS Learning Media to make sure everything aligns with national standards. We’ve got ‘em for grades K through 8. And they are free, and they are fun, and you can find them and print them out at RadiolabForKids.org.

If you are liking what you are hearing over here in Terrestrials, please like and subscribe to the podcast. It helps our chances of continuing on–like a tree stump!–giving more life and audio stories to you. [Lulu chuckles.]

Aight, that’ll do it! Thanks so much for listening! Catch you in a couple spins of this dirty ol’ planet of ours.

Ooo-woo-woo!

Bye!

(The credits music fades out.)

Gene: Then in the summer there’s almost always a barred owl that you can hear from right here. And they make a sound that is “Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you all?” And I’ll do you a little rendition of that: (He imitates the bird call, which sounds exactly the way he said it would.)