This is a production of West Virginia Public Broadcasting.

Hey there, I'm David Marcum, and welcome to another episode of Mountainthology.

Our producers have brought together three unique stories touching on local art, wildlife, and tourism with a seasonal spooky twist.

All that and more today on Mountainthology.

Lets take a look.

Whether you're just having a lovely store in the park or are a certified binocular toting bird watcher.

It's always wonderful to spot an avian friend in the wild, but if something goes wrong, they need human help to get them back in the air.

Producer Devon Nuckles visits the Avian Conservation Center of Appalachia to meet some of the people who help keep the world wild.

You should probably eat less.

(Squak!)

That might help.

Just look outsid and see all the different birds that are out there right around us all the time, and a lot of them go unnoticed.

The ACCA was founded in 2012 by a group of us who were friends, who liked birds, who really wanted to do something important for conservation.

We had a lot of meetings at coffee shops talking about wha the mission statement would be and what we'd be doing on a day to day basis, and we decided that our organization's mission would be to conserve the region's wild birds throug research, education and rehab.

We have several veterinarians at the hospital who volunteer their time to take a look at those birds for us and give them the veterinary care that they need.

We had a very interesting cas come in, and it was a two week old bald eagle chick that was in a nest in Pennsylvania, an there's a nest cam on the nest.

Lots of people watching these baby eagles as they hatched start to grow up.

One of the viewers saw the bird ingest a fish hook in a piece of fish, and through a large group effort, we were able to get that bird retrieved from the nest, brought it here to the Avian Conservation Center, and we were able to do surgery, extract that fish hook in that two week old neonata eagle chick, and rehabilitated over the course of a couple of weeks.

And within two weeks, the bird had grown in size, its incisions had healed and were able to replace it back in the nest.

And just this week those eagle checks have started the fledging process.

That's where they leave the nest and learn to be an eagle, how to find food and how to survive out there in the wild.

So it's a pretty remarkable story.

Lots of effor from lots of different people.

We also have an outdoor classroom here in Cheat Lake, West Virginia, where groups can come and visit the birds that live there.

We have about 20 non really civil birds that live at the outdoor classroom.

They're all sort of special needs bird that can't go back to the wild.

And we invite the public to come and meet those birds.

You can rehab all the birds that you want, but if you don't tell anyone about it, you know, you're almost no making a huge difference, right?

You're making a difference to the individual bird, of course but telling the story is very, very important for conservation.

And so at the ACC we bring in birds that are injured.

Maybe they've been hit by a car, maybe they've flown into a window, maybe they've been picked up by domestic housecat.

And the public finds them, brings them to our nonprofit, to our bird hospital.

So this is a hatch year, red shouldered hawk here.

We can tell it's a red shouldered hawk by the color pattern here on the wrist and wing, as well as the striping on the tail.

Okay, that's a red shouldered hawk.

And it's a hatcher bird.

Based on the plumag characteristics, the eye color.

That means it hatched this year.

So this was a brand new admission.

It just came in today.

So on physical exam I'm going to talk you through what we're doing.

I'm painting the keel which allows us to assess body condition in this birds a little underweight.

Many of our birds that are admitted are going to be a little bit leaner than they should be, because they've typically got something wrong with them.

They've had some trauma.

Maybe they've been down on the ground for a couple of days and they haven't eaten.

So nutrition is one of our key features that we look for in these new admissions.

Just like any other physical exam that a veterinarian or a doctor would do, we're going to listen to heart and Lungs as well as his air sacs.

The air sacs are part of the respiratory system.

And birds.

Birds have a very well adapted respiratory system and that includes air sacs.

That's a essentially transport for, air into the lungs for gas exchange.

And that's what allows birds to fly at very high altitudes and not pass out from lack of oxygen.

So the musculoskeletal system is important for us to evaluate here.

So on palpitating, the humerus, the radius, ulna, the elbow, the carpal joint, checking the feather quality as well.

Feeling for fractures, strains, sprains, bruising, pain, instability.

And unfortunately this wing we can palpate some instability here.

That hurts a little bit.

So I'm feeling a wing fracture here of two bones actually the radius and the owner.

Those are the bones of the forearm here.

So we'll get some X-rays and check the extent of that fracture to see if it's something we can repair or not.

This is mio, the broad winged hawk.

Broad winged hawks are one of our smaller haw species here in West Virginia.

Neo has been living under human care since 2010.

So she is pretty old.

For a broad winged hawk you might not be able to se because she keeps her good eye on you but she is blind in her left eye and that is the result of being hit by a vehicle.

Unfortunately, a hawk.

Most hawks that are blind in one eye can't return to the wil because their depth perception is affected by that blindness.

Neo can see, but not well enough to catch live prey, so she would not be able to really thrive in the wild.

So broad wing hawks that are blind in one eye are not releasable.

Bronwyn Hawks in the wild eat a small mammals rodents.

They will also eat reptiles and amphibians and some invertebrates.

They like to live in foreste areas, especially swampy areas where they can catch those frogs and snakes with us, though, neo eats mostly mice I think sometimes people believe that conservatio is something outside of humans, and that's not really the point.

I mean, conservation is taking care of ourselves.

It's not something that exists outside of people.

I mean, people are a part of the ecosystem.

People make a huge impact on the planet, and we exist on the planet because of the ecosystems that we are a part of.

Get outside and appreciate birds.

Lots of folks have interests in birdwatching or birding.

Many people have bird feeders that they put out.

And there's lots of organizations that are out there to help protect our native wildlife.

And so it's it's very, very important that that everybody contributes a little bit to keep the world wild.

Action.

Each artist has their own philosophies and inspirations behind their art.

Artist and New Yorker cartoonist Andy Friedman is inspired by baseball cards.

Producer Landon Mitchell filmed a conversation Andy had with Mountain Stage producer Adam Harris about painting, music, and how baseball teaches us how to lose.

Okay.

Well, I want to I want to thank you for having me.

And it's really fun to collaborate on this card.

And I want to give you the original painting.

Well, I mean, I thought it would be cool to bring a trading card int the mix of commemorative items that collectors and audience members seem to appreciate.

My whole life, I've been drawing baseball cards on the side for fun.

Isn't that really what we should be doing at the forefront?

You know, I was paintin baseball cards in college, but it was like to warm u for my more serious paintings.

I mean, is there anything more serious than what you actually want to be doing?

Look at that stoic Minnie Minoso over there.

Now, that is a portrait.

It almost doesn't need to be painted.

I mean, I found a 1955 Bowman card of an umpire.

I don't know how rare it is, but I've never seen anyon like it, so, you know, I'm sure.

I'm sure it's more common than I think, but.

But most in the wild I have 55 bowman of an umpire.

So if I find a card that I was.

Man, I love that card because of this, because of that, because of that.

And I want to have it in my collection.

Yet I also want to paint it.

Look, I think every card is a work of art, and every car is going to appeal to someone for different reasons, whether I'm the first one t ever be emotionally stimulated because of a shadow on the A, you never know what someone's going to be attracted to.

It could be the color of the clouds in the sky in the background that maybe reminds you of your grandma's house, or the more obvious could be about the player, obviously.

But for me, once I more i with my own fingerprints and ink and all that, it turns i into a whole other level of art.

It becomes like an art object.

And I sign each on and I just like, put them away.

So I have my own kind of reference cards.

I was sharing this story with my son at the time.

Maybe he was like ten.

I'm like, isn't that interesting?

I mean, wouldn't that be cool?

Like years down the line, someone will have a reference card like that.

He's like, but it's ruined.

You ruined it, I said, yeah, but imagine if popular Picasso painted baseball cards and he had all his reference cards.

Because you're not popular, Picasso.

Wow.

So, Masters of Universe stuff.

I missed that.

I'm not sure these individually.

How much is that?

Yeah.

I want to start painting these.

That would be awesome.

Yeah, I like this one too.

So my first two sets are, like, deprived of any iconic cards at all.

And mostly, I don't know, the lesser known players, but people would be like, man, that that reminds me of my childhood.

You know what I mean?

Like, for me, it's like the radio towers in the background or some of those spring training shots, and you'll see old cars in the background.

I don't know, I feel in a certain way picking up where Norman Rockwell left off.

Never mind the subject matter.

For me, it's an infrastructure for a fine artist to reach mainstream Americ and find people where they are as they si so that they can be, you know, affected by these paintings in their space.

And that's what we love about our music.

If you only were able to go see a concert and spend a lot of money on a ticket and travel, music would be different.

Music affects people's lives, everyday lives.

I mean, music taught me how to live, but not at concerts.

From the albums that reached me.

And so at 3:00 in the morning when you need it most.

There it is.

And we're talking about the same cardboard as we're talking about here.

Look, on the back of those cards are stories told in numbers, you know, and the most inspiring one for me as a kid who struck out every At-Bat.

And the first year a little league was, wow.

Look, it seems Mike Schmidt also struck out every at bat in his first year.

And yet, look what this story says the next year.

Your numbers can be italicized because you led the league, you know, three years in a row.

So it told me that you could you can always turn around.

When I was a little league coach for seven years.

Like the thing I wante to impart the most on the team was that everything you learned on the baseball diamond you can apply to real life when you're down eight?

Nothing in the bottom of the ninth.

That doesn't mean you're out.

That's up to you.

You know, these lessons, those are those are those are real life lessons.

Those are real life lessons.

That's right.

And you don't give up.

I mean, even if you lose.

I mean, baseball teaches us how to lose.

I mean, I'd rather watch the press conference from the manager of the losing team, then a whole game.

You'll learn more there.

Look at the different colors to.

Those are purple skies.

This one's blue.

Wow.

You're keeping them in order, right?

Yeah.

Okay.

Okay, so I got in trouble.

People have hard lives, but, you know, like, humans are also unbelievable.

Do you feel that?

Same like, as an artist developing your career?

Was there some, some overlay there, too?

I mean, for sure.

I mean, look, when I was working as the assistant to the cartoon editor, The New Yorker, which I did for two years.

Give me a tour around the office and all this stuff.

I just stack this high of unsolicited stuff that comes in every week.

Make sure you look at these, because some of our most famous published cartoonists actually came from these stacks over the years.

You know, we'd reject cartoons for, for, for 20 year before we before we bought one.

I was like, why would you do that to an artist?

Well, we we want to make sure we're publishing cartoons by artists who we are positive would be doing it anyway.

And that mirrored a chat I had with the great spider John Kerner of Kerner, Ray and Glover, Minnesota.

Bob Dylan used to go see playing coffee shops in Dinky Town when he was Robert Zimmerman, enrolled at the University of Minnesota, and I saw him playing.

I was visiting my grandparents in Florida in 2000, in Boca.

So Dave Ray and Spider John were at a little bar in Miami, and my grandparents excuse me for the night.

I borrowed their car.

I drove down to go see them in between sets.

Spider John was at the bar drinking whiskey.

I sat up next to him and w struck up a little conversation.

Back then, I wasn't a musician at all and never even thought about being a musician or playing guitar.

I didn't do that for another ten years.

Maybe.

You know, I'm from Brooklyn.

I'm 24 years old.

I mean, how does it.

Doesn't it make you feel good that some kid from Brooklyn is 24 year old, came all the way down here to see you play?

And he took a shot and he looked at me and he said, it doesn't matter.

I was like, doesn't matter.

And I kind of like, got this chill.

Like, nah, the end of the day, I got to know I'd be doing this anyway.

And I really think that's the standard for artistic achievement.

Yeah.

Do it anyway.

One of the most famous folklore legends to come from West Virginia is also one of the most popular in the country.

Folks swarm like a moth to the light from all over to celebrate Mothman and other creepy cryptid culture.

Our producers Landon Mitchell and Troy Rankin traveled to Point Pleasant for the Mothman Festival, and talked to the owners of the Worlds Only Mothman Museum about how a 60 year old ghost story could put a small town on the map.

Now if only I could find him myself (Gulp!)

By 9 a.m.. It's.

It's chaos.

It's good chaos, but it's chaos.

It's chaotic good.

Yeah.

My mom and dad and aunt, Yeah.

That and Jimothy, if, if I had to describe him off, man, in, like, the most basic sense to someone who was completely unfamiliar with the legend, I would say that it is a paranormal creature, a cryptid like Bigfoot or Nessie.

It was a a entity that visited Point Pleasant in 1966, showed up for about 13 months from the bridge, collapsed.

Then basically he just took off.

So they say anyways but probably like Bigfoot cousin or something like that.

But yeah, he used to be a part of a Point Pleasant.

So as far as the connectio between Mothman and the bridge, it was really a John Keel and Gray Barker that started to make those connections.

And then other paranormal researchers have furthered that research.

It's put Poin Pleasant on the map, literally.

People from all over the world recognize Mothman and the history and the myster that goes right along with it.

And I don't think it would exist if those others hadn't came first.

I was actually going t come here just on a regular day.

Then my friend reached out to me and said, hey, there's a mothman festival going on, let's go see it.

Looking around and seeing what Mothman is about.

I mean, I'm from Florida.

They got the skunk ape.

The skunk ape isn't as celebrated as the Mothman is.

You see how integrated it is with with the townsfolk, the tow itself, the history behind that.

There's so many other things.

I think that's what really kind of, stood out.

So the the first festiva was actually held in a building just down the street, and it was indoor and it was very small.

The very first Mothman Festival, I think we had maybe 50 people.

It was it's crazy.

You go from 50 people to 24,000 or so for the whole weekend, and a population of like 5 or 6000.

The whole reason why the Mothman Festival started was because my dad, Jeff, who owns the Mothman Museum he wanted to bring people down to Main Street in Poin Pleasant, him, Carolyn Harris, she was one of the festival directors, too.

She had a diner here on Main Street in the 60s.

70s you know, Main Street was a lot busier.

Of course, once the bridge collapsed that kind of changed everything.

But that was the goal is to create an even to attract people to the area.

And it worked.

And I don't know that he ever imagined that it would work as well as it has.

And then the culmination of events between that and The Mothman Prophecies, all the documentaries, so many things that highlight Mothman, that it's just encompassed all of West Virginia, like it started here in Point Pleasant, but it just turned around and grabbed the whole state.

We kind of follow all the weird TV shows and Mothman and all of that.

The hundreds who have seen it have given it a name, the Mothman.

The people down here are wonderful.

They love this festival.

We love this festival.

And we came down here on a very hot summer day to see the Mothman Museum.

My dad, Jef Walmsley, is the one who founded the Mothman Museum.

Shortly after The Mothman Prophecies came out.

We had a, of course the Mothman Festival every year, but when it first started, there was a group of guys that purchased all of the props from Sony Pictures, and they used to come and bring it down and set it up every year during the Moth Man Festival.

Eventually they got to the point where they couldn't come down anymore, so they donated it.

And that's ho the Mothman Museum came about.

Some people like to donate, like their pop art to us, some things we purchase, some things we have to make ourselves.

One of the most important things that are in.

There are handwritten depositions from the eyewitnesses themselves when it happened, and those were given to us by Linda Scarbrough, who was the firs one of the first eyewitnesses.

The Scarborough's in the mallet sightings, the thing that put us on the map, basically, and those are in the museum.

And then we've got the Woodro Darren Burger, Tate Woodrow Dam burger tapes are like the coolest thing we have.

Honestly, those two things and newspaper clippings, the newspaper clippings in their most of them my grandpa collected.

So my dad's dad had all of those saved, which is cool when you think about it, to turn, turn it into the museum artifacts.

So my friend made him.

I talked to him into it and he did a great job.

Nobody could do any better, and it's just a tremendous things for Point Pleasant.

I think for Mothman just kind of represents the how this one thin can happen in such a little area like Point Pleasant.

It could just skyrocketed.

This whole thing, like so many people know about it, even knows from a smaller area.

I don't know, man.

It's just the atmosphere.

I really enjoy getting out here.

It's a great day to do it.

And, I do like the costumes.

I've seen, like 50 moth man's walking around, so that's been awesome.

How long it takes.

Put the costume together.

Oh, probably around two months.

I've simply been a fan of the Mothman.

Like, for for so long.

I've just really enjoye seeing the community of Mothman.

Like, there being a monster around West Virginia, around our hometown.

And I just love it so much.

And I just like how off man looks.

So as far as how many people come to it to see the statue in the museum, I have no idea.

We have a 24 over seven moth cam that you can go to, and they're out there all hours, day and night.

I have no idea.

I don't even know how you would.

Which I guess is a good problem to have.

What's your favorite feature on the man statue?

Off the cake.

He's got more cake than a bakery.

Oh, they love it.

They actually had the had to pour an extra concrete pad behind the statue because like, they had worn a pothole.

Yeah, because it used to.

Yeah.

Used to just be dirt.

And they had actually like, so many people walked back there, they had worn a one foot deep hole into the back of the statue.

At what point did that start?

Because that statues been there for a long time.

And it's just like.

It's like what, another pop culture thing, I guess.

Like the beans thing.

The beans thing just kind of had beans at the statue.

Mr.

B's chips.

Yeah, that's for West Virginia Daily, especially about pepperoni rolls in Mountain Dew on West Virginia Day eve for Mothman.

They put quarters in his crack.

Yeah.

Which we do not recommend.

Yeah, don't do that.

If you're gonna do it for a dollar, at least it won't hurt it.

Yeah.

You're scratched, you're scratching.

You're scratching up the crack.

We don't.

We don't stop scratching the crack.

Donate it to somebody.

It's kind of neat because, like, people leave trinkets there.

It's almost like a weird little memorial of some sort.

I'd say after the fallout stuff came out, we just went into a, I wouldn' say a different direction, but a new direction, you know to add that to the melting pot.

They love them.

They do.

And we appreciate their love.

Everyone just puts so much love into this festival, and the entire town comes together and everyone's a little bit weird, and that's okay.

And there's not enough spaces like that now, so it's fun to come and just have that every year as a place to go and meet people, even if it's something that surrounded by tragedy or mystery or anything like that, like peopl can make something out of that and make a community out of that.

And I think that's really cool.

That's my favorite thing about the festival is that there' so many different walks of life that come here, and that they all feel comfortable, and they feel at home and they feel like they're with family.

And that's my absolutely favorite thing, hands down, about Mothman Festival.

You know, you've got a lot of underdog or they think they're underdogs.

You know what I mean?

When they call it the black sheep of the family and things like that.

Mothman is the perfect representative for that as far as the cryptids go.

And he's supposed to be like this supposed harbinger of doom and all that, and he had to be in the exact opposite.

Just seems like he's kind of the one that brought all the people together I don't see Bigfoot doing that.

Right.

What's your name?

Where are you from?

What are you doing here at Mothman Festival?

All righty.

Is there anything else you want to add for us?

All right.

But that was perfect.

Thank you so, so much.

Thanks for joining us for this episode of Mountainthology and exploring the wealth of wonders from the wild and wonderful.

Stay tuned to West Virginia Public Broadcasting for next months episode of Mountainthology.

Until then, extended versions of the stories you saw today are available on Passport, and later on our YouTube channel.

I'm David Marcum, see ya next time This has been a production of West Virginia Public Broadcasting.