Living out in the country, I have discovered that there is a large, diverse population of animal life right outside my front door. Hundreds of creatures that run, fly, swim and crawl can be found within a few paces of my house. What I have discovered to be truly remarkable isn’t just how varied the fauna around me is, it’s how many of these things absolutely terrify me.
While I am not saying that the animals roaming the neighborhood want to kill me, I do have the distinct impression that none of them would miss me terribly if I suddenly disappeared. And it’s not just the coyotes, snakes, and other predators I’m referring to.
Let me give you a couple of examples.
A couple weeks ago, I was outside doing some work on my camping trailer. I was cleaning the interior and restocking some supplies for my next vacation trip. While I was inside the trailer, I heard something land on the roof. My first thought was that a pinecone or small tree branch had fallen and hit the trailer, but the noise didn’t stop after the first bang. Whatever was on the roof continued to scrabble around for almost a minute.
With the hair on the back of my neck standing up, I carefully opened the trailer door and peered outside. As I looked up, I saw a crow perched on the edge of the camper staring down at me. My first reaction was to slam the door so it wouldn’t fly into the trailer with me. After a few minutes alone in the trailer with my heart racing in my chest, I convinced myself that the bird was as frightened by me as I was of it and it must have surely flown away by now.
I opened the door again.
The crow was now directly over the doorway and staring straight down at the top of my head. In a panic, I waved a hand at it trying to shoo it away. The damn bird just opened its mouth and screamed at me. I closed the door again to regroup.
It was surreal. I felt like I had slipped into an Alfred Hitchcock movie. You know, the one with all the birds attacking people. I don’t remember what it’s called.
I finally threw open the trailer door and ran for the garage. After reaching shelter, I picked up the first weapon I could find, which turned out to be a four-foot long pooper scooper. I hefted it in my hand and headed back to do battle. The crow did not move until I was two feet away and swinging the metal poop-scoop like a baseball player trying to hit a fastball after coming off of a three-day bender. When the crow finally flew off, it still did not appear afraid of me. It just gave me a look like, “WTF is wrong with that guy?” and sailed away to perch on a nearby telephone wire.
To this day I am convinced that if I hadn’t chased him off, he would have waited for nightfall then broken into the house to murder me and my whole family.
Which sort of makes me a hero.
You’re welcome, family.
My second nearly lethal brush with nature involved the hairy monstrosity in the picture above. I was in my garage minding my own business when that spider from Hell rushed at me from underneath the lawnmower.
I leapt out of the way and she continued to run out onto the driveway. I think she was suitably impressed by my display of athleticism and had last-minute, second thoughts about attacking. Either that, or my screaming simply hurt her ears. (Do spiders have ears?)
I hate spiders. Especially the ones that are big enough to throw a saddle on and ride around the yard. They have no business living in my garage when there is plenty of space outside for them to frolic around. There are also lots of cats and dogs in the nearby neighborhood for them to eat.
Spiders may be the creepiest things that walk on this planet, and there are probably millions of them in my back yard.
On a side note, do you think spiders ever creep themselves out with how ugly they are? Has there ever been a mother spider wandering around with hundreds of baby spiders on her back that suddenly thought, “Holy shit! Where did all these damn spiders come from?! Oh right. They’re my kids.”
Yeah, probably not.
Anyway, man-eating birds and gigantic spiders are just two of the life-threatening beasties that live around me. There are many more out there, each more ferocious than the last. I have to remain ever vigilant if I want to survive, because every one of them is just waiting for an opportunity to take me down.
Okay, not every one of them.
The frogs are cool.
.
.
.
Enjoying Deep Dark Thoughts? Follow me on Facebook so you don’t miss a post. Just go to my page and click the “Like” button to receive updates on my blog and other projects.
And you can follow me on Twitter @gallenwilbanks.