Episode Transcript: #1932 - Merlin Tuttle
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Well, welcome to the show, Merlin.
What a great name, by the way.
Thank you.
Your parents named you Merlin.
Did they make you get into magic at all?
My mother actually named me Merlin DeVere and her hope was that she would get a kick
out of me being a medical doctor, MD, Tuttle MD.
But it didn't work out that way.
Well, you're a bat scientist.
How does one specialize in bats?
How did that journey start?
Well, I was always interested in anything in nature.
I started out at two collecting monarch caterpillars and watching them make cocoons and hatching
to butterflies.
Then I went into a snake phase in which my mother was not happy with that phase.
At five, I was dragging in sometimes snakes four or five feet long and they'd get loose
in the house.
We moved into a new neighborhood one time and a welcoming committee came over to welcome
my mother to the neighborhood.
I had a few days before caught a seven foot eight inch coach whip snake that I was really