Unlicensed S3 E3: Pest Control
34:28 Share

This is the third and final episode of Unlicensed Season 3 we will put on this feed to hear the rest of the season. And hoo boy does it get intense, this one really puts our detectives through something. You can listen to all three seasons right now with an Audible free trial. Please do it. I really want people to hear this show because I'm very proud of it. Okay, here you go. I learned I like Thai food tonight. My abuelita, she made tamales for her brother's restaurant.

She used her grandmother's recipe, which was given to her by her grandmother. And this is the recipe I use now at my own restaurant. At home, we eat a lot of the food I do not sell. Other times we get burgers or pizza or wings. We keep it simple in my family. When Molly asked me to come eat Thai food, I almost said no, but I am glad that I said yes.

I ordered Pad Thai with chicken. I remembered hearing something on the radio about how Pad Thai was created by the Thai government to unify the nation. So, seemed worth trying. Plus, my mother always said, if you don't know the restaurant, ask for their most popular dish.

Oh, it was delicious. Umami and spice, cilantro, crunchy bean sprouts, and the shock of lime brought it all together. I'm so thankful for such a lovely dinner, but I'm so angry about what happened to you, Lou. I know you can take care of yourself, but if you ever need anything, anything, you name it, Hector will be there. Unlicensed

Episode 3: Pest Control At first glance, you may think that a dingo looks like a dog. And you'd be correct. They're both canines. The main differences lie in the dingo's wide jaws, flexible joints, and sharp, wolf-like teeth. At a quick glance, you might be tempted to pet a dingo. Take it home, name it Bailey, ask it if it's a good boy, give it a greenie.

and tie a bandana around its neck. You may be tempted to try. Many people have. Dingos born in captivity have been domesticated successfully. But, like their canine cousin, the coyote, their predatory drive is hard to kill. It's possible to tame them, but at what risk?

My office is wrecked. I'm shoving loose files and papers into any drawer I can find. Molly's mending the closet door, which is hanging off its hinges. Tammy calls with some work for us. Give it to me. Anything to keep my mind off the night I'm having, I say. A woman, Lisa Carruthers, reached out that morning to Tammy. Two skunks were left on Lisa's front porch in a cardboard box.

delicately held shut with neat bows of twine and some errant holes poked in the top.

The skunks were nestled together in some Easter grass and shredded newspaper. When Lisa had opened the box, the creatures leapt free and Lisa ran back inside. They did not bite or spray her, but they did dig up her lawn and tear the cardboard box into bits. Lisa wants to sue the culprit for harassment. Tammy told Lisa that she needs to know who did it in order to sue them. "I told her she can't sue the skunks," Tammy says.

Chasing down a skunk-wielding prankster sounds so much more relaxing than being hunted by Neil Bacardi, so I tell Tammy we'll take it. Hector agreed to hide the bag that Neil is after in his storage room, tucked discreetly away in a catering tray. It's not Fort Knox, but it'll buy us some time until we find a safer place.

The next morning, we drive up to Lisa Carruthers' Granada Hills home. It's on a suburban street three blocks west of a Ross Dress for Less. Lisa is on her knees, trying to mend the grass in her lawn with patches of sod. Lisa is giving us her version of events and ends with, "I screamed and shut the door once I figured out what those things were. I could have gotten sprayed or worse, rabies."

I imagine those skunks were as scared as she was. It's interesting that they sprayed neither Lisa nor her porch. "Where are the skunks now?" I ask. But Lisa doesn't know. Animal control was called, but they still haven't come out. I look across Lisa's lawn. There is still cardboard and newspaper everywhere. But I notice there are shreds of a heavier weight paper in the mix with some handwriting on them.

I pick up a couple of these particular pieces and show them to Lisa and Lou. Then I ask Lisa, "Did you see a note with the box?" She looks a little embarrassed at having missed an incriminating note. I tell her it might be nothing. Might just be more scrap paper. It would be the world's hardest jigsaw puzzle to try to put these back together into a comprehensive message. And even then, it's possible the handwritten note wasn't anything more suggestive than a grocery list.

But still, we should find as much of these scraps of handwriting as we can. Could be something to it. Lisa offers to work on this, since she's already cleaning up the lawn. "Great," I say, because there's no way I was going to do it. I ask if anyone else was home at the time of the incident. She says that normally her 16-year-old daughter Emma would be home, but she's been at her father's house in Winnetka all week. She'll be back later today to spend Thanksgiving weekend with Lisa.

Lisa adds, "Actually, Emma's been grounded. I let her go to her first high school party last week. She got drunk and came home after curfew." "So Emma's grounded at home with her dad then?" I ask. "Probably not," Lisa grumbles. Todd's version of grounded means they ordered DoorDash and play video games together.

Do you think whoever left the skunks could have been targeting Emma? I ask her. Bullies. Pranksters. Lisa says, no. Everyone loves Emma. She's popular. I'm the one people don't like. Lisa rescues cats through her organization, You Gotta Be Kitten Me.

It's hard to get mad at people trying to help animals, but you'd be surprised, she says. People get mad at me all the time for no reason. When I ask her to give me an example, she says, maybe I'm not a team player. All the other shelters around here keep taking in rodents and exotics. Meanwhile, there are dogs and cats

true human companions that deserve our focus more. I'm opinionated about this, okay? The other shelters know my stance and they can be a bit terse with me. Lisa elaborates on the dangers these true human companions face by telling us a nauseating rumor about an overseas puppy farm smuggling purebreds through the front of a city-run shelter here in LA.

The puppies suffocated on the trip and they arrived dead. The government covered the whole thing up, ditched the dogs and pretended it never happened, Lisa says with an intense conspiratorial tone. I ask Lisa what this has to do with the skunks left on her porch as a prank. It wasn't a prank, she says. It was a message.

"You want to give us a thought on who sent this message then?" I ask. "Oh, absolutely," she says. "Gregory. He was the only volunteer of mine I ever had to fire." According to wishful thinkers on Instagram, foxes show love and affection, indicating their desire to be domesticated. When wolves were becoming dogs, it was survival of the friendliest, not the fittest.

that help them survive in human quarters. The same behavior is being demonstrated in some wild foxes. They're curious about humans as a species and are seeking a closer relationship with us. They're not there yet. They're testing the waters. You can't rush evolution. If you were to go into the woods and snatch a fox out of its den and keep it in your house as a pet, it would still be considered a wild animal.

Foxes are predators, even if they're nice and cuddly. One day, its natural curiosity and instincts will take over, and it will mortally wound your pet cat. Or worse, someone in your family. There is a difference between taming and domesticating. In the former, you're working in harmony with a creature's nature. In the latter, you're working against it.

Gregory Keller, disgraced volunteer of You Gotta Be Kitten Me, is lazily petting a gigantic Maine coon named Hugo in his condo in Sherman Oaks, recounting a tale from a couple years ago of how he tried to get Lisa's car towed for illegally parking at an adoption event. Volunteers were known to park there without incident to help set up and transport animals, but once Lisa dismissed him as a volunteer, he wanted to get her back.

"A rule's a rule," Gregory says with a shrug. He called 311, telling them a car was blocking their event and needed to be removed. Fortunately for Lisa, she moved her car before the tow truck arrived. "I tell him about the skunks left on Lisa's porch," Gregory huffs. "Couldn't be me. I wouldn't risk getting rabies just to spook her. Hats off to whoever did it, though." "She fucking hates skunks," he adds.

"A bit unusual for someone who loves animals so much," I say. He shakes his head. "Sometimes, people would show up at You Gotta Be Kittin' Me with lizards or parrots or hamsters, asking for help finding them a new home," he explains. "Every time, she'd make the person feel like shit for even asking. One time, a dude brought a tarantula. She threatened to hose it down with Raid.

Gregory says he took the tarantula without Lisa knowing. He hid the spider in the back. He knew he could find someone to take it. "Tarantulas are chill," he says. "Just the coolest little monsters."

He called around, leaving messages. Eventually, a shelter in Santa Clarita called back, but he'd given them the number for You Gotta Be Kittin' Me. Lisa was the one who answered. She was livid that he'd secretly kept that, quote, giant insect in her shelter. So she fired him. She actually did me a favor. I couldn't keep working with her and stay sane, he says.

I got nothing on this skunk thing that happened to her, but if you find out who did it, high five 'em. Before we head out, Lou asks if the Santa Clarita shelter was able to rehome the tarantula. Gregory says, "Yep." He points to a terrarium next to his coffee table and out crawls the only spider I have ever considered adorable. Her name, he says, is Medusa. - My phone vibrates in my back pocket as Molly and I get into my car.

It's Caroline. She's checking in, but I can hear her pacing and shallow breathing. This woman's anxious, but I can't lie to her. I have to tell her about the mysterious M, the garbage bag of stuff he gave us, the ransacking of my office, along with the threatening note in Neil Bacardi's handwriting. Were you followed? What was in that garbage bag that he would want to take? She says.

Oh, everything's still accounted for, I reassure her. We're still working on your case, but we have to lay low for now. And maybe you should, too. Mesopotamian and Egyptian artifacts reflect that humans have raised pigeons since at least 4500 BCE. They were our domestic counterparts, often being raised as pets or livestock.

We taught them how to find their way back home, and they helped us deliver messages for a brief few thousand years. Then, one day we turned them loose on the street. We no longer had any use for them. They weren't our pets anymore. They were vermin, hardly wild, and needing comfort and structure. They have learned to survive in spite of their discounted status, albeit poorly.

Their reputation for being scrappy and unsavory comes from their discomfort in having to fend for themselves. A pigeon's nest is a haphazard pile of sticks, trash, lacking structural integrity. They love to eat seeds, nuts, fruit, and vegetables, things you would find in your garden, pantry, or fridge. Creature comforts, a taste of home.

On the drive up to Santa Clarita, I take a few of the scraps of paper I pulled from Lisa's lawn. The little slippers of handwriting I can see seem to be made with a gel pen. Blue ink, but not standard blue ink. A softer, more sky blue color. One of the pieces has three letters in a row, and I can see that they're all carefully drawn in round, bubbly strokes. Midge, at the Santa Clarita animal shelter, remembers Lisa as, quote,

A bit headstrong. Midge said a lot of shelters support each other by sharing volunteers, sourcing foster care, even taking on other animals if they have space and the other shelter is overrun. Lisa would only take dogs or cats, which Midge says is fine. A lot of places can't handle more than that. But Lisa, Midge says, and then pauses. She eventually finds her words and continues.

Lisa had opinions that came off to me and others as judgmental. Sometimes we felt angry and hurt based on her tone of voice. Plus, Midge adds, more assertively now, shelters need to build mutually beneficial partnerships, and neither You Gotta Be Kitten Me nor our shelter were able to build such a relationship.

The Santa Clarita Animal Shelter, Midge explains, has made successful partnerships with wonderful organizations like the Oak Spring Wildlife Sanctuary in Cagle Canyon, and they even found exotic animal enthusiasts willing to adopt non-traditional pets. Were any of these exotic animal enthusiasts skunk lovers, I ask?

"Domesticated skunks are adorable!" Midge squeals. "They're descented, so they'll never spray you, and they're just the sweetest. If you ever met one, you'd be a skunk lover too." Descented, meaning their stink glands are removed. Lisa was not sprayed, and we did not smell skunk at all in front of her house.

I'm starting to think that someone delivered domesticated skunks to Lisa. They didn't intend for Lisa to be harmed, just scared. If I wanted to look into domesticated skunks, is there someone I should go see? I ask.

"Oh, you're talking about Hank," Midge says without hesitation. "Hank is the only guy in LA County I know that raises skunks. Hank sometimes shows up to adoption events with them, sets up a booth and everything. People can't get enough," she adds. Midge gives us his information, saying he's a bit odd, but mostly harmless. He's very helpful though, always willing to lend a hand when it comes to offloading the errant iguana or Flemish rabbit.

We head back west. Hank's address is in Lake Balboa, not far from Lisa's house. Hank warmly ushers us in when we tell him we're here about skunks. His home looks like it was decorated by the same people who did the Cheesecake Factory. Except there's a winding labyrinth of hamster trails stretching across the ceiling where one might have crown molding. We explain what happened with Lisa. He says that he doesn't know her. He just knows her as Emma's mom.

Emma is friends with Hank's daughter, Olivia. Olivia and Emma are in the same grade. They met at a cat adoption event in Lancaster last year. Emma was in charge of a booth for You Gotta Be Kitten Me, and Olivia came to support her dad, bringing along her pet boa constrictor, Tristan. Hank gets lost in his memories for a minute. He says,

Emma thought Olivia's snake was so cool, and the next thing I knew, Olivia was begging me to bring all of our animals one by one to meet Emma. Sweet girl. She really got a kick out of our squirrel, Russell. I asked if he ever interacted with Lisa at these events. Hank says no. He heard about her, though.

Emma had said her mom wouldn't stand to have these kinds of pets, but Hank had told her she could come visit Olivia and all the animal family anytime she wanted. Come to think of it, Hank says, I haven't seen Emma in a minute. According to Hank, the girls used to hang out all the time. He doesn't know exactly what happened, but he thinks they had some kind of falling out at the beginning of the school year. Olivia hasn't really talked about it with him, though. What kind of falling out, I ask?

"I didn't pry," says Hank, crossing his legs, accidentally kicking an empty hamster wheel. "I hope it'll pass. Olivia hasn't been herself in weeks." I jump back into Lisa's case. I say, "As someone who knows skunks, we were wondering if you knew anything about what happened to Emma's mom?" We explain about the box of skunks, Lisa's belief that they were an attack on her, our belief that the skunks were probably domesticated,

Hank straightens himself up and speaks slowly, choosing his words carefully. "I would never misuse my skunks to cause someone else distress, especially if they're someone my daughter cares about." I tread lightly. "Maybe someone hopped the fence in your backyard," I say. "Could a couple of your skunks have ended up in the wrong hands? Do you microchip them?"

Good question, Molly. I ask it again in a different way. The skunks found on Lisa's property, if we took them to the vet to get scanned, would they show up as registered to you? Hank stands up.

You think this was me, don't you? I mean, I see how you might think that, of course, but I'm just as confused as you. Hey, we're not cops, Hank. But our client wants to understand who did this to her and why. You're a skunk expert in a skunk-related case. That's all.

I'd like to see my lawyer. Hank's watched too many police dramas. Hank, this isn't like... Before I can finish, a tall, lanky teenage girl appears in the doorway. Hey, Daddy, can you sign this release form for my field trip? The girl looks up and sees me and Molly. She looks at her dad again. What's going on, she asks. I take it this is Olivia.

Hi, I'm Lou. That's Molly. We're private detectives. I say, trying to find my soothing voice. I don't want Hank kicking us out, or Olivia for that matter, if she sees how worked up we got her dad.

Olivia, she says, shaking both our hands. Everything okay? It's nothing, hon, Hank says. Here, let me sign your form and you can go. You don't need to worry about any of this. Well, well, I might have a few questions, I interject. If that's all right by you, Olivia.

Oh, I definitely have a question. Because as Hank takes Olivia's release form, I see she's already filled out the top with her name, grade, date, and contact information. She's filled it out in gel pen, not a normal blue ink, but a softer, more sky blue. And those letters, they're all carefully drawn in round, bubbly strokes.

"Olivia, do you know anything about this?" I ask, as I pull from my pocket a couple slivers of damp shredded paper covered in sky blue ink drawn in round, bubbly strokes. Her eyes twitch a little. Her hand smooths back her hair in an awkward, jerky gesture. But she keeps her voice level when she says, "This is weird. You're weird. What's happening?" So that's it then.

Lisa wasn't the target. Emma was. These two friends had a falling out, and Olivia, in her anger, sent two skunks and a threatening note to Emma's house, not knowing that Emma was at her dad's this week. I can feel Hank getting ready to kick us out, so before he can, I blurt, "'What happened with you and Emma?' Olivia's face reddens, tears welling up in her eyes."

Hank puts his arm around her and shoots me the nastiest look. I deserve it. I think you should go, he says to me and Lou. No, Olivia sobs. Why? Why did she? She tore up my note. I tell her that the skunks chewed up the note. They're wild creatures after all. Olivia's silent for a second. Then she says, she broke up with me, okay?

I'm not over it. And you can judge me for it. I judge me for it. And wait, you're detectives? Hang on. Did something happen to her? Is she okay? Olivia asks, her voice cracking. This is her first real heartbreak. And she's falling apart in front of two complete strangers. Poor Kat.

I want to give her time to grieve. But Hank's gesturing for us to leave, so I get to the least tactful but most necessary question. "So, Emma was your girlfriend, but then she broke up with you. And for that, you skunked her house?" I ask. Olivia screws up her face and says, "No, no! The skunks were a gift!" "Oh, well, shit," I think and look over at Molly, who seems to be thinking the same thing.

The note and the box of skunks were part birthday present, part apology, part take me back, baby, please. The two girls met at an adoption event their parents attended. Emma with the cats and dogs, Olivia with the snakes and squirrels and skunks.

They headed off wandering between booths, often stopping to admire the strangeness of offbeat domestic animals. Tarantulas are fuzzy and cuddly. Skunks can be litter trained like a cat. Foxes have amazing wild laughs. Pygmy goats are backyard friendly and can walk on a leash. Emma came to love two of Olivia's skunks. She even named them Checkers and Yahtzee.

After the breakup, it felt wrong to keep them, according to Olivia. So it was only natural that Emma have her two little skunk children. In telling us all of this, she looks pleadingly at her dad. Hank is as shocked as me and Molly, if not more so. He's learning right now that his daughter's friend was her girlfriend and that his daughter gave away a couple of his skunks.

"I'm sorry, Daddy. I should have asked first," she says. "I don't know what I was thinking." Hank twists his scowl into a thoughtful grin. "You were thinking of getting your girlfriend something nice, that's all," Hank says. "I'm sorry I didn't know you two were a couple. Let's go find those skunks and then we can get ice cream and talk about it, okay?"

If you try really hard and are willing to put up with societal side-eye, you too can have a domesticated skunk. There are entire Reddit threads dedicated to skunk owners posting selfies of them and their precious pets in an array of filters. However, as a skunk owner, you need to be your pet's protector.

Once you remove the glands that emit their signature noxious odor, the skunks are defenseless. Spraying would-be attackers is their primary way to ward off predators. Once you remove these glands, you can't turn them loose in the wild again. It's unethical. You, a human, made a choice to domesticate a creature. You can't undo what's been done.

We call Lisa, who launches in immediately about the scraps of paper she's collected. She's certain she solved the mystery and that the handwriting is from some woman over in Sylmar who used to work for the ASPCA and that they, Lisa, I interrupt her rant, Lisa, we've figured it out. We'll be at your place in a few minutes. We're bringing friends.

When we arrive, Hank and Olivia immediately start calling for the skunks. Lisa squints a little and says, "Olivia? Uh, Olivia's dad?" Lou and I tell Lisa what we learned. She's trying to process all this when a Ford Bronco pulls into the driveway. It's her ex, Todd, returning their daughter, Emma, back to her mom's house.

Emma looks confused by the presence of me and Lou, not to mention the messy lawn still dotted with clumps of shredded cardboard. But what really throws Emma for a loop is the sound of her ex-girlfriend's voice shouting, "Checkers! Yahtzee!" She looks at her mother for answers. "You can help them look for the skunks, but you're still grounded," Lisa says, which doesn't exactly help with the confusion.

Emma takes a handful of dried cranberries from Hank and Olivia and joins in the efforts to find checkers in Yahtzee. Between calling their names, there's the beginnings of a new friendship. They can't get back the one they had before, and it sounds like they aren't getting back together, but it's probably true that they're the only two skunk girls in the valley.

After about an hour, Hank is cradling Yahtzee and striding down the sidewalk. He found her underneath a car. Checkers is next to come out. He was tucked away, holding very still in the camellia bushes. He runs straight to Emma, who scoops him up. He nuzzles into her elbow nook, then scampers up her arm and perches on her shoulder. Emma's beaming and scritches his chest.

"Let me see it," Lisa says deadpan, making her way to Emma. She gives checkers and a praising once over, then pets the length of his pelt. His tail curls under her hand. "You can keep this one," she says, and Emma squeals with excitement, throwing her arms around her mom. Lisa hugs back, careful to hold her body away from the skunk. Lou drives me back home. I'm riding the high of a case ending with good feelings.

But I crash quickly when we turn my corner. There are red and blue flashing lights in front of my building. Lou walks with me to my apartment. My door is smashed open, still holding on to one hinge. The couch, my favorite piece of furniture, the only thing that belonged to me outright in the furnished sublet, is sliced open with its innards sprayed all over my living room. The bathroom door Sophia helped me repair is hacked in half.

My books have been torn apart. Even my fridge has been yanked off the wall. And there's a note by the front door. And the same familiar handwriting as the note at Lou's office. I'm losing patience with you. Where is it? The note says. This was finally my home. And now it's another crime scene. I feel violated. Sophia runs over and hugs me. Oh my god. Thank god you're okay. I'm sorry.

I didn't have your number. I was so worried. What's going on, Molly? It's too much to explain to Molly's neighbor what's going on, but Molly shouldn't stay here alone tonight. Stay with me, I tell her. At least through the holiday. Oh, God, it's Thanksgiving tomorrow. I keep forgetting. I'll order acid turkey. Are you a cranberry sauce or a cranberry jelly person? On Thanksgiving morning, Lou and Molly watch the Macy's Parade and the Dog Show.

Molly hopes Sophia is enjoying her new TV. Lou makes coffee and eggs. She and Molly go for a walk. The day is crisp and bright. The air quality so good, they can see the 210 stretch all the way to San Dimas. They see purple echinaceas and ball cacti. They do not see the dozens of lizards resting camouflaged on stucco walls and palm stems.

They see no clouds. The sky is an incessant blue. On a day that celebrates gathering together, two women talk about their families, about how little they visit them, about how much they love them in spite of it all. They see a billboard for a new movie starring Sidney Sweeney and Timothée Chalamet, and both agree it looks like Oscar bait, but it still looks good. Maybe that'll be something to go do tomorrow.

They talk about whether they should even bother making a salad for dinner tonight. One of them says green bean casserole is basically salad, and the other agrees. They don't talk about the break-ins. They don't talk about Neil Bacardi. They don't talk about the floppy disk or even the teen girls and their skunk drama. They enjoy the air, the sun, the hills, and the company.

They admire the eastern skyline of the San Gabriel Mountains, which have remained unchanged to the human eye for as long as humans have been here. Facing the grandeur of the horizon, they do not notice a 2019 gray Honda Civic idling only a few doors down from Lou's house. Like lizards on stucco walls and palm stems, gray Honda Civics are prolific and insignificant.

A person could stay unnoticed in a Honda Civic. And a person does stay unnoticed for two full days, watching Lou and Molly's every move.