Colt Knight: 00:19
Welcome to the Maine Farmcast. I am your host, Dr. Colt Knight, associate extension professor, state livestock specialist for the University of Maine Cooperative Extension. Today, I’m joined again by Dr. Gregg Rentfrow. As we’re recording these, it seems apparent that we have so many—yeah—episodes.
Colt Knight: 00:40
But that’s because when they come to visit, I try to get three or four episodes recorded. Then we spread them out over the years. Sometimes, we mention things like the weather or time of year, and it’s really out of sync when we release these episodes. But Dr. Rentfrow and I were just sitting here swapping stories.
Colt Knight: 01:03
And I was thinking, you know, sometimes in Extension, we get some really cool stories—or growing up where we did, we’ve got some really cool stories. And I told him, we need to record some of those.
Gregg Rentfrow: 01:19
And I said, let’s do it. Let’s do it.
Colt Knight: 01:21
And he said, “We got twenty minutes. Let’s kick this pig.” Let’s do it. And one of the stories that he’s told me over the years that I always think is just a great university-slash-extension story is the story about the brain in the trash can.
Gregg Rentfrow: 01:41
Yeah. So, you know, when you get into this—especially when you’re at the specialist level—you really never know where life’s gonna lead you. And I’ll never forget one Friday afternoon, I’m sitting in my office. My Friday afternoons were: sit in the office, do some work, and then usually around 4:00, I meet my training partner, and we go to the gym and lift weights. It was about 3:00 or so, and my phone rings.
Gregg Rentfrow: 02:10
It said Fayette County. Lexington is in Fayette County. And if you’re from the South, you’re from a county, not a city. So you rarely see “Lexington Health Department.” It’s usually “Fayette County Health Department” or something like that.
Gregg Rentfrow: 02:24
It was the coroner’s office that called me up. The county coroner says, “Hey, this is so and so. Dr. Rentfrow, would you mind coming down? I’m sitting in your meat lab, Doc. I have a brain that we need to identify.” A brain?
Gregg Rentfrow: 02:46
So I go downstairs, and there sits the county coroner, and he’s got this brain. He said, “Did this come from your lab?” I said, “No. It’s too big.” He said, “We thought maybe it was a beef brain.”
Gregg Rentfrow: 03:00
For folks at home who don’t know what we’re talking about, this brain was about the size—maybe a little bigger—than a softball. And all of—
Colt Knight: 03:09
Our livestock species have brains—tennis ball–
Gregg Rentfrow: 03:11
Tennis ball, maybe lemon-sized. I mean, cattle—that’s what always fascinates me. A fifteen-, sixteen-, seventeen-hundred-pound animal is controlled by a brain about the size of your fist. So we’re looking at it, and I said, “No, it didn’t come from us. The brain’s just way too big.”
Gregg Rentfrow: 03:29
I asked, “Where’d you find this thing?” He said, “It was in a dumpster behind a church.” I’m like, what in the world’s going on at church?
Gregg Rentfrow: 03:41
He says, “We don’t think it’s human.” He was describing the anatomy of the human brain, and it didn’t match. Long story short, he calls me up a few weeks later and says they figured out what it was. A local high school got online, ordered some primate—monkey—brains, and didn’t know how to dispose of them after class. So the teacher drove around and threw them in dumpsters. Nobody noticed—except for this one church.
Gregg Rentfrow: 04:12
Their dumpster was empty, they threw it in there, and the custodian went out and found this brain. A lot of it.
Colt Knight: 04:19
Someone watched way too many serial killer TV shows or something.
Gregg Rentfrow: 04:24
Too much NCIS and CSI and all that fun…
Colt Knight: 04:28
Very Dexter-like.
Gregg Rentfrow: 04:29
Very Dexter-like. But I can’t imagine—how do you explain that if you get stopped by the police? I’ll never forget—when I was in grad school at Missouri, and my mother loves to retell this story. We had a big project. We were killing pigs.
Gregg Rentfrow: 04:47
I was doing the stunning and sticking. So I was covered in blood. I got home and thought, “Well, I can go take a shower, but I gotta mow the yard.” So I decided—I’m already dirty—I just left my kill floor clothes on.
Gregg Rentfrow: 05:03
My wife comes home and says, “What are we gonna do about dinner?” I said, “Just order pizza.” What she ended up doing—and this dates us, Colt—is instead of dialing 411 for information to get the number, she accidentally dialed 911 and hung up.
Colt Knight: 05:25
They don’t like that.
Gregg Rentfrow: 05:26
They don’t like that. She left to go get the pizza. I had no idea. And here comes a police car with its lights on. He gets out, sees me mowing, covered in blood.
Gregg Rentfrow: 05:43
He says, “We had a dropped 911 call from this house.” And it clicked. I said, “Oh, my wife probably accidentally dialed 911 when trying to get the pizza number.” He takes two steps back, looks me over, and goes, “Where’s your wife?”
Gregg Rentfrow: 06:04
“Holy smokes, she went to go get the pizza.” He stayed until she got back—to make sure.
Gregg Rentfrow: 06:12
You know, I’m up here for a meat cutting school. A lot of folks may or may not know—Colt’s from West Virginia. He got into academia because he decided not to be a coal miner. But in West Virginia, we have—or you have—we have them in Kentucky too—these three-, four-, five-hundred-pound raccoons known as black bears. You had a really cool black bear story I’ve always loved.
Colt Knight: 06:44
I’ve got this picture. It’s me standing there in my mining hard hat and a greasy shirt, in front of a truck—with a black bear sitting on top of the truck eating a Twinkie. And everybody always wants to know the story behind that picture.
Colt Knight: 07:13
I was working in a coal mine on top of a mountain in Twilight, West Virginia. It was the Progress Mine. We were building a dragline, and there was a little parking lot. We would all park there, and they brought us to the site in a school bus, basically. There was this little bear that kept coming around. It was a real menace. People kept feeding him.
Colt Knight: 07:29
So he kept coming. I remember I had a little car at the time. I pulled into the parking spot, got out, stood up—and, you know, it’s mining world—so I had my lunch bucket in one hand. I looked up. The bear looked down at me. We locked eyes. Then he looked at me… then looked at my lunch bucket. I said, “Oh, I know what he wants.”
Gregg Rentfrow: 08:02
What’s the lunch bucket?
Colt Knight: 08:03
I reached into my lunch bucket. The first thing I grabbed was that Twinkie. My thought was: I’ll take this Twinkie, throw it way off into the weeds, and the bear will go chase it. Then I’ll be out of proximity. But what happened—bears look clumsy—
Gregg Rentfrow: 08:23
They do.
Colt Knight: 08:24
Just walking around and whatnot. But that bear had cat-like reflexes. He snatched that Twinkie before it even made it a half-inch out of my hand. Then he just ripped it open and started eating it—
Gregg Rentfrow: 08:39
Right there on top—
Colt Knight: 08:40
Of the truck. One of the other folks we worked with had one of those little disposable cameras. I yelled, “Hey, get my picture while the bear’s distracted.” So I stood there and got my picture taken with the bear eating a Twinkie.
Colt Knight: 08:54
But the funny part of the story is, the guy who owned the truck—we called him Texas Steve. I don’t think he was from Texas, and I’m not 100% sure his name was Steve. He just got that name because he wore those pearl snap Wrangler welding shirts.
Gregg Rentfrow: 09:15
And…
Colt Knight: 09:18
Steve thought it would be cool to get his picture with the bear too. So he started feeding the bear everything in his lunchbox.
Gregg Rentfrow: 09:26
Which is not what you—
Colt Knight: 09:27
He had a Pepsi, and the bear was drinking the Pepsi. He gave him all the food—which worked out well until he ran out. And then the bear got upset. The bear literally started chasing him in circles—
Gregg Rentfrow: 09:41
Around the center of the parking lot. And they’re faster than you think.
Colt Knight: 09:43
Yeah. So Steve ripped that shirt off—that pearl snap shirt—like in a Superman comic or something. He took it and started whipping it at the bear like a bullwhip.
Gregg Rentfrow: 10:02
Yeah. Yeah.
Colt Knight: 10:02
The bear thought it was funny the first two or three times. Then on the next one, he just grabbed the shirt and yanked it. Pulled Steve down to the ground. At this point, we’re all worried.
Colt Knight: 10:12
While this was going on, I was actually moving my car to the other side of the parking lot—because if you’ve ever been around fed bears, they will try to break into your vehicle. And when they get in, they do unspeakable things. You can’t get the smell out. They rip all the trim and everything off.
Gregg Rentfrow: 10:33
Unspeakable—by depositing organic materials. Yes. And—
Colt Knight: 10:39
So by the time I got parked, Steve was on the ground. I had a half-eaten bag of Doritos, and I just ruffled it—
Gregg Rentfrow: 10:48
To get his attention.
Colt Knight: 10:50
Then I launched it into the weeds. The bear took off after it. And that’s how we—
Colt Knight: 10:57
Saved Steve from the bear. And how I got my picture with—
Gregg Rentfrow: 11:00
With the bear. I’ve often said, when my career in Extension is over, I need to sit down and—kind of like we’re doing—write some of these stories down. Because we get some really off-the-wall questions. I worked fourteen years as a retail meat cutter in a grocery store. I’ll never forget—one time at Thanksgiving, this customer came up to me asking about the turkey. I answered all her questions and then she said, “By the way, how long does a chicken have to grow before it becomes a turkey?”
Gregg Rentfrow: 11:36
I was like, what? Speaks volumes about the lack of connection some people have with the farm. We get a lot of really strange and funny stories and questions in Extension.
Colt Knight: 11:56
You were talking about your police story—I’ve got one of those from graduate school.
Gregg Rentfrow: 12:00
Yeah?
Colt Knight: 12:01
When I was a PhD student in Arizona, I managed the university feedlot. It was not too far from campus, but on the outskirts of Tucson—on the other side of the interstate. One side was city, the other side was desert. That’s where the feedlot was.
Colt Knight: 12:24
I was out feeding cows—probably 5 AM. You do it before it gets hot.
Gregg Rentfrow: 12:31
Especially out there in—
Colt Knight: 12:32
The desert. I’m there with the feed truck putting feed in all the bunks. Then the next thing I know—the sheriff’s department, SWAT team—there were three gates to the facility, and they came busting through all of them. Full riot gear, guns out. Headed straight to the hay shed, right in front of the feed bunks where I was.
Gregg Rentfrow: 13:02
Yeah.
Colt Knight: 13:03
I thought they were coming to bust me for something. Turns out, they just used the feedlot for training.
Gregg Rentfrow: 13:17
You’d think the university would let you know that.
Colt Knight: 13:20
Well, we had a lot of old vehicles and stuff from surplus—it was the boneyard. They can’t sell or give them away since they’re government property.
Gregg Rentfrow: 13:30
So they just sit there.
Colt Knight: 13:31
They used it as a training ground. I think the previous manager had a deal with them. Probably supposed to give us a heads-up…
Gregg Rentfrow: 13:45
They probably thought, “It’s early, no one’s here.”
Colt Knight: 13:53
Yeah, probably.
Gregg Rentfrow: 13:54
Bunch of college kids—they don’t get up that early. But one thing folks don’t realize at the specialist level is how much we travel the state. You’re all over Maine.
Gregg Rentfrow: 14:12
I’m all over Kentucky. And you did your undergraduate at UK—University of Kentucky. Basketball there is almost a religion. Rupp Arena is the cathedral.
Gregg Rentfrow: 14:33
In my travels, as soon as someone hears “University of Kentucky,” and it’s basketball season, they have all kinds of messages for me to take back to the coach. And I’m grateful for the years Coach Calipari was with us. Now we have Mark Pope. But if I ever meet Coach Cal—or Coach Pope—I’ve got a lot of messages for them from the people.
Gregg Rentfrow: 15:17
Don’t know if you get that in Maine—maybe with hockey or football?
Colt Knight: 15:26
Yeah. I get requests all the time. “The university should do this or that.” I don’t have that authority. But—
Gregg Rentfrow: 15:36
Appreciate the feedback.
Gregg Rentfrow: 15:45
You know, to dovetail on that last story—I’ll never forget. I’m originally from Illinois. Born and raised there. Bachelor’s and master’s from the University of Illinois, and PhD from the University of Missouri. Big sports schools.
Gregg Rentfrow: 16:13
But I didn’t understand how huge basketball was in Kentucky. In Illinois, we had the Chicago Cubs, White Sox, Bears—and I grew up only an hour from St. Louis, so we had the Cardinals too. We had pro teams. Kentucky doesn’t have pro teams.
Gregg Rentfrow: 16:31
When we got there, I inherited a grad student who had season tickets from someone. He said, “Go enjoy the game.” My wife and I are sitting there. Next to us were two undergrad girls—had to be freshmen. This one girl was on the phone with her dad, tears rolling down her cheeks:
“Dad, I’m finally here. It’s so beautiful, Dad. It’s so beautiful in Rupp Arena.”
Gregg Rentfrow: 16:58
Different world. But this is really fun—talking about these stories. You could probably do several podcasts just on Extension stories.
Colt Knight: 17:09
Dr. Rentfrow has been coming up to Maine to help us with the Maine Meat Cutting School for the last nine years. The first year we invited him, I didn’t know Dr. Rentfrow. So he stayed in a hotel.
Colt Knight: 17:25
And I had pneumonia.
Gregg Rentfrow: 17:27
Yeah, you were really sick. You were driving back and forth. That’s when we did it down in Augusta, I believe.
Colt Knight: 17:35
But I was like, “You can’t invite someone to your state and then just ditch them in the hotel.” So we’d go out to dinner, and we got to be friends—sitting there and talking. The next year, he stayed at my house to make life easier, so I didn’t have to drive to the hotel.
Colt Knight: 17:53
Then he noticed I built and played guitars. He said, “Man, I’d like to do that.” And I told him, “Next year when you come up, we’ll build you a guitar.” You’d think over nine years we’d build that one guitar quick. But—
Colt Knight: 18:28
It took about six years. Not only were we busy with work, we had the pandemic one year that really put a wrench in things.
Gregg Rentfrow: 18:39
Then one year, you got sick again.
Scott: 18:41
Yeah, we got—he had food poisoning.
Colt Knight: 18:46
Scott had to drive me home one day because I was so sick I couldn’t even drive.
Gregg Rentfrow: 18:46
Thank goodness for GPS. But yeah, I don’t think either of us realized how tired we’d be at the end of the day. The last thing we wanted to do was build a guitar.
Colt Knight: 18:58
I remember I was so sick I could barely stand up. It’d be late at night after work. I’d look at Greg and say, “Alright, let’s go work on this guitar.” And he’d say, “No, no. Don’t worry about it—you’re sick.” I’d say, “Well, if we don’t do it, it won’t get done.” Eventually, we did finish it.
Gregg Rentfrow: 19:15
We did finish it. Beautiful guitar. Really cool story. I always tell the story of that guitar. It’s a Stratocaster shape, but me being me, I had to do it different.
Gregg Rentfrow: 19:30
If you’re familiar with guitar terms, we put humbuckers in it—which you don’t often see on Strat bodies. And not just any humbuckers—these were the ones designed by Slash. They were like $300. I snuck that onto the credit card. My wife was not pleased.
Gregg Rentfrow: 20:01
But the coolest part was the covering on the body. It was made from a 110-year-old piano from UMaine or something, right?
Colt Knight: 20:07
The teaching farm manager—don’t ask me why—brought this old piano to the farm. They left it out in the weather.
Gregg Rentfrow: 20:14
But the patina on it—
Colt Knight: 20:16
I salvaged a couple of panels. I loved that alligator-looking finish. It was shellac that had aged beautifully. I figured out a way to put it on your guitar without disturbing the finish. Then we cut some mother of pearl and made a butcher’s cleaver—
Gregg Rentfrow: 20:37
Yeah.
Colt Knight: 20:38
—and laid it on the fingerboard. Then Dr. Rentfrow named it: Slaughterhouse Guitars.
Gregg Rentfrow: 20:44
Slaughterhouse Guitars. Yep. And I’m still trying to learn how to play. If you squint your ears really tight, you might pick out a little bit of Lynyrd Skynyrd. That’s the difference between us—Colt’s an old country guy, and I’m a hard rock guy.
Gregg Rentfrow: 20:54
But we have fun playing guitars. He’s a heck of a lot better than I am. But yeah—it’s always fun coming up here.
Colt Knight: 21:07
Well, Dr. Rentfrow, it was fun swapping stories. But we’ve got to go teach class.
Gregg Rentfrow: 21:13
We do. We do.
Colt Knight: 21:18
If you’ve got fun stories, let us know in the comments. And if you’ve got questions, comments, or suggested topics for the upcoming Maine Farmcast, send us an email.
Gregg Rentfrow: 21:30
Which, by the way—your guitar playing is the intro, right?
Colt Knight: 21:34
Yeah. Yeah. Extension.farmcast@maine.edu
Gregg Rentfrow: 21:45
That was cool. It was fun. Let’s see how many people start laughing at that.