Catfish Noodler. This is easily one of the best jobs on the show because of Mike‘s comments (though, I admit, not that dirty because much of it takes place in the water). For those that don’t know, and I’m sure there are a lot of you, you noodle by sticking your hand – or a foot if you’re feeling adventurous – into an opening in hopes that a catfish will grab hold.
When they do you pull it out and you have (hopefully) caught yourself a catfish and you can clean, fry, and eat. If not, you find another hole, or find something stick-like to poke around a little deeper in the hopes that you can get it good and agitated so it will bite the next thing you stick in. Yes, people really do this. I told you it was good.
The dirty part apparently comes about because of all the muck stirred up, but you are in the water, so it’s not all that bad. When it gets really nasty is once you bring the catfish up out of the water. If you’ve never seen a catfish, it’s basically a set of bones, some flesh and a bunch of snot. This you clean off, which allows you to get to the scales, and then you can bleed it, and by this time you’re good and dirty. Then you can cut it up, bread it and fry it, and finally you can eat because you’ve worked up a hefty appetite.
Septic Tank Technician. Another good segment. This time Mike is in Wisconsin working the Honey Wagon crew cleaning out septic tanks. The first one is a relatvely small 1000 gallon tank of household waste. Then he cleans out an 8000 gallon grease tank at a school and finally he climbs into a really big one to scrape the grease down to suck it all out. While television doesn’t yet convey a sense of smell, I could just about smell it because of Mike’s use of descriptive terms. Another great one.
Worm Dung Farmer. The title segment was last this time around, and it wasn’t bad, as it involved a poo fight with Mike throwing the casings (that’s what they call poo, I guess because if you farm worm poo you don’t want to say that’s what you do for a living) at his hosts and generally moving around a bunch of dirt, a bunch of worms and a bunch of poo.
Interesting stuff, but compared to those first two bits it was nothing. They probably should have shown this first to build the tension. Still good, but it was a bit of a let-down after those first two, which are just amazing.
