It was a tough audience, so we decided to take the step of speaking more like ourselves. It took a while for us to really be recognized, but we were given permission to do so, and that was intentional.
What was food like before you started? Was it just wildlife biology and how to apply for a fishing license?
It was good science and it’s still good science. It’s something that people worked really hard on. It just wasn’t formatted in a way that really made people click. Because Twitter, especially at the time, was a place that people went to get angry and we were there saying, “What’s your quail habitat like?”
(Laughter) Yeah, I bet you do. “Who’s hunting this season?”
So a lot of it came from that feeling of, “This is what we got for you. Here you go.” People were super used to harassing the government and were expected to do so. So when I would log into our Twitter account, I realized that there was a lot of misunderstanding about what we did. So a lot of that anger was misdirected. I think some of the initial brashness and responses started with something like, “We’re not funded by taxes,” or “That’s not who we are.” We just tried not to take a ton of hits that we didn’t have to take.
Tell me about the voice of the feed. Is that all yours?
I think the bold responses are mine. But just like the initial one, the first (tweet) comes from a group of everyone else. Sometimes it’s about taking an idea from (someone in the organization) and then (making it work). But once this house (gestures towards the house she is sitting outside) literally exploded. Like all the pipes in this house exploded. So the sassy responses about that came from me in real time, saying, “Okay, I have to save the valuables.” I think that’s when people were like, “This is kind of Ron Swanson“Like a sarcastic caricature.” So that’s what we based it around. Someone who starts out friendly and nice, like a ranger with a little bit of attitude or a ranger who’s been on duty too long.
The pipe break happened during one of your first viral tweets, from January 2022. It’s about the mountain lion with the text: “YOU are cold. They have fur. Don’t let them in.” What was that experience like of “Oh shit, people are reading this”?
It was really hard because we were just trying to get better. Then when it blew up, I don’t think I was ready, as a professional and as a person, for so many people to be aware of what I was doing at the same time. I took it way more seriously than I should have. It caused me a lot of anxiety and a lot of mental health issues.
How did you deal with that?
I found that as I started to relax and trust my team a little bit more, it got better to start posting those groundbreaking tweets more frequently. So, starting in 2022, I think we went viral with a tweet that got over a million views at least once a month. That was the normal for us. That cougar tweet is the one that’s used as a joke. People still quote it on that account and me and it’s like, “I don’t think everyone realizes what was going on; that wasn’t a good day. But I’m glad you enjoyed it.”