Dangerous Discussion

At lunch today we got into a discussion about natural dangers. One person grew up in the Texas panhandle. During her childhood years she ran across two dangers. Once a rattlesnake passed beneath her on a lawn chair while she was sunbathing. Her Mom saw it happen and decided not to say anything to her until all danger had passed. Later they found and killed the rattlesnake in their garden shed. Another time a tarantula got into her house. The spider was on the stairs when she was sneaking into the house late at night. The household disturbance got her off the hook for breaking curfew. Some people at the table were very disturbed by these reports. They couldn't imagine living with such dangers. "A tarantula in your house? No, sir, not me. Wouldn't put up with that." I tried to put things into perspective. Danger is a matter of what you have are used to. True, we don't have many poisonous snakes here or large, hairy spiders. Tarantulas aren't going to kill a person. I think people severely under appreciate the danger of a wood tick and a mosquito. Lyme's Disease and encephalitis are very dangerous problems. When I travel I look at the Center for Disease Control website for the dangers where I am visiting. Kenya, for example, had malaria and Yellow Fever. Look at the CDC website for Minnesota and it will have a large warning about Lyme's Disease and deer ticks. I went camping with a young woman from Russia several years ago. Another person (not her) got a wood tick and this woman freaked out. The tick hadn't even bitten anyone and this woman was screaming. She was genuinely frightened by the warnings she had read. Wood ticks don't scare me. I've been bitten many times. What does scare me are skunks. I freeze with panic when I run across a skunk in a field. When I was a child, we lived next door to my Grandparents who had a small farm. They had a cow, a horse, some goats and chickens, an apple orchard, a grape arbor, a large garden including rhubarb and horseradish, and a huge raspberry patch. They had a series of dogs all named Shep and some barn cats. One summer a rabid skunk was hanging about the property. The skunk attacked a litter of kittens. My Grandfather saw the kittens were bitten by the skunk and had to put them to death. I was riding my bicycle up the road and saw part of that mercy killing. The skunk continued to hang around. One day the skunk was up by my Grandparent's house. It had to be a weekend because my Dad was home. The skunk was acting very strange - approaching the house and wobbling on it's feet. We were told to stay inside. My father went out with his shotgun. We watched from a bedroom window. Dad was walking counterclockwise around the house. My sister and I were screaming out the window, "Dad! It's coming behind you! Now it's coming the other way!" We were overcome with excitement and drama and fear. It seemed like the skunk and my father circled the house several times. I imagine my father probably waited until the skunk was on the side of the house we could not see to shoot it. That was a very dangerous day.