In media interviews I participated in over the years, such as my 2016 appearance on TV Comedy Central’s Tosh.o, they often ask me: ‘Why do you use rubber chickens in your climate comedy videos?’ 

The short answer is: “I don’t know! It makes me laugh” 

However, in that 2016 Tosh.o interview, the TV host and comedian Daniel Tosh asked me bluntly, “But we’re supposed to just laugh when we see a rubber chicken?” 

My response, ‘I laugh.’ 

The long answer is that I don’t know what to do with the 3 rubber chickens I own since June 2009. At that time, I worked as a seasonal park ranger at Crater Lake National Park. I was a naturalist or interpretation ranger giving various park programs such as geology talks, historic lodge talks, guided sunset hikes, evening campfire programs, junior ranger activities, and narrating the boat tours. 

For the last three weeks in June each summer, the park required the interpretation rangers to complete 3 weeks of training to be knowledgeable about the park to answer visitor questions, how to prepare a ranger talk, and how to respond to medical emergencies that we might encounter. Each summer, our staff would attend one complete day of first aid and CPR (Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation) training so we could adequately act if we are the first rangers on scene in such emergencies. The park law enforcement or LE rangers, who were also trained as Emergency Medical Technicians or EMTs, led these medical trainings. 

On June 25, 2009, Cater Lake LE ranger Pieter Sween led this training. Thinking like a park ranger interpreter, he wanted this first aid training to be engaging, entertaining, but most important, informative. In particular, Pieter led a section of training known as triage. This training aimed at helping us make quick decisions if we come across an incident involving mass injuries or casualties of park visitors, such as a crowded bus or boat accident, a multi-vehicle collision, a mass shooting, explosion, building collapse, etc. A very heavy subject for a medical training. Pieter wanted to include humor to lighten the severity of the topic, but also to help cement the vital information of this training in our heads. 

This training could literally save someone’s life in a situation we need to make snap decisions. Thus, the topic was deadly serious, but it needed to be presented in a compelling way that the information would stick in our heads.

Pieter came up with the idea of me playing a snotty French waiter where I would introduce various rubber chickens. The chickens would be labeled with various conditions, such as broken leg, pregnant, unconscious, dead, head injury, or needing CPR. As a group, we then had to decide how we would treat the chickens. The categories were minor, delayed, immediate, or morgue.  

I guess Pieter figured with my animated, lively, and fun personality that I would be the perfect ranger to participate in this training as the uptight and arrogant French waiter. We had over 30 Crater Lake park rangers attend this training. I remember it being a big success and getting big laughs from the attendees as I brought out each chicken individually and I announced their medical ailments. Pieter wrote a good script for me to perform. I happened to have a fancy white shirt, a dress vest that I bought for a wedding years ago, and new black dress jeans I could wear to play this part. 

To prepare for this training skit, Pieter approached me to play this role in early June. He did not own any rubber chickens, so he needed to order some from Amazon. He was too shy to ask his boss, the Chief Law Enforcement Ranger at Crater Lake, to order 6 rubber chickens. 

Pieter humbly requested that I ask my boss to order the rubber chickens. At that time, my boss was Eric Anderson, the Supervisor of Interpretation at Crater Lake. Eric was originally from the Big Island of Hawaii. He had a nickname within the National Park Service as ‘The Mellow Hawaiian.’ Eric was a sweet and caring man with a great sense of humor. He was a tough boss with high expectations, but he had total faith in his staff and me that we could reach his and our goals. I loved working for him. He was one of the best supervisors I ever had in my work career. 

I thought it was a fun and hilarious challenge to inquire to Erik to order 6 rubber chickens. Pieter and I meekly went up to his office to meet with him. After we politely explained our skit and requested that he order 6 rubber chickens, Erik sighed and started looking where he could order rubber chickens on the internet. 

He was a bit worried about throwing away few of his department’s budget dollars on this rubber chicken order and how he might explain this expense to his boss. He then grumbled at us, “Please tell me that we will be using these rubber chickens again.” 

Without missing a beat, I blurted out, “Sure, we will be using these rubber chickens again!” 

Internally, I had no idea how I would be using those rubber chickens again. After this triage skit, they sat on my shelf for a year. I then used them on my ranger led trolley tours starting in 2010. I would pull one out to say, ‘Folks just to let you know this is a very serious ranger program.’ 

I would also use the rubber chicken during the trolley tour when I pointed out Mt. Thielsen, a 9,100-foot prominent mountain located just north of Crater Lake National Park. I shared with visitors on the trolley that I twice hiked up that mountain in 1992 and 1994, but I only made it 10 feet from the summit. It was a place known as Chicken Point. I then held up the rubber chicken in my hand. It got a big laugh from the audience. 

That was my only uses of a rubber chicken at Crater Lake. Was it worth the park expense and our federal taxpayer dollars for Eric to order these 6 rubber chickens? Maybe. I still think so. 

In November 2009, my friend Naomi and I got into an argument when I was housesitting in Ashland, Oregon, located two hours south of Crater Lake National Park. She pressed me hard on what I wanted to do with my life since I struggled to give her a clear answer. Finally, I retorted, “Fine! If I could do anything, I would like to be ‘The Climate Change Comedian’!” 

She nearly fell out of her chair laughing and replied, “I want you to go home right now and grab that website domain!” I followed her advice and did just that. In April 2010, a friend helped me created the www.climatechangecomedian.com website to help promote me as an entertaining climate change speaker. 

Years later, I still had no idea what to do with that title and website. In January 2014, I made a short YouTube video with my then girlfriend, who later became my wife, Tanya, to promote her violin playing and to book me for events as ‘The Climate Change Comedian.’ In February 2014, I shot a video with my mom, Fran Ettling, to advertise her piano playing and me as ‘The Climate Change Comedian.’ One year later, my dad, LeRoy Ettling, complained that he was not in any of my YouTube videos that I created with Tanya or my mom. Thus, we created a video with featuring my Dad and I talking about climate change in March 2015. 

For all these videos, I used the rubber chicken to make the point, “I think I am very funny!” 

Each time, they immediately responded, “No! You are not!” 

These short videos using the rubber chickens caught the attention of Comedy Central’s Tosh.o. The show invited my mom and I to pay for us to fly to Los Angeles in April 2016 to do the video tapping with Daniel Tosh for the show that aired on August 2, 2016. 

Thus, those rubber chickens Eric bought at Crater Lake in 2009 as a humble request from Pieter Sween and me enabled my mom and me to briefly appear on national TV. As ‘The Climate Change Comedian,’ I doubt I will ever top that appearance on Tosh.o. The show invited me back to appear again in November 2020. 

I still don’t have an answer for Eric Anderson, Daniel Tosh, or anyone else why I still have 3 rubber chickens to this day or why I used them as a comedy tool to promote climate action. 

I don’t know. I don’t have answers for what I do what I do. I just do what I can to create a better world and have some fun along the way. 

Maybe we should ask the rubber chickens. Or a professional psychiatrist.