This time last year, I had a rather grisly encounter with the first snake of the season. I felt rather bad about killing one of the good guys, a bull snake.
While mountain biking this morning, I got a momentary glimpse of something looking out of its hole in ground, but I laughed this off as excessive cowardice.
Later in the day, a short 18" rattlesnake slithered his way across the dirt road in front of a couple campers. The rattles were clearly visible, but the snake didn't make any noise with them. Maybe it was too immature to rattle?
At any rate, I called the campers over to have a look and take a photo. As usual, my dog doesn't seem to even notice snakes.
Campground hosts get asked questions that I don't have a perfect answer for. Imagine a tourist from, say, Wichita Falls, Texas. They walk up to the host, and ask, "Do you got any buh-buh-b-b-b-bears here?"
Meanwhile, back home in Wichita Falls, they had an F4 tornado rip through a trailer park, the week before they left for their vacation.
Risk versus perceived risk. Moral hazard. Emotionalizing the infrequent. Please don't think I am arguing, que sera sera. I am all for modifying your behavior and stacking the odds in your own favor.
But let's not make the rattlers worse than they are: I think this snake just wanted to 'get to the other side.'
If you look at the extent of the catastrophe and multiply it by the probability of actually happening, the most dangerous thing a man ever does is walk down the wedding aisle. But I think I will leave that out of my standard 'host speech.'
While mountain biking this morning, I got a momentary glimpse of something looking out of its hole in ground, but I laughed this off as excessive cowardice.
Later in the day, a short 18" rattlesnake slithered his way across the dirt road in front of a couple campers. The rattles were clearly visible, but the snake didn't make any noise with them. Maybe it was too immature to rattle?
At any rate, I called the campers over to have a look and take a photo. As usual, my dog doesn't seem to even notice snakes.
Campground hosts get asked questions that I don't have a perfect answer for. Imagine a tourist from, say, Wichita Falls, Texas. They walk up to the host, and ask, "Do you got any buh-buh-b-b-b-bears here?"
Meanwhile, back home in Wichita Falls, they had an F4 tornado rip through a trailer park, the week before they left for their vacation.
Risk versus perceived risk. Moral hazard. Emotionalizing the infrequent. Please don't think I am arguing, que sera sera. I am all for modifying your behavior and stacking the odds in your own favor.
But let's not make the rattlers worse than they are: I think this snake just wanted to 'get to the other side.'
If you look at the extent of the catastrophe and multiply it by the probability of actually happening, the most dangerous thing a man ever does is walk down the wedding aisle. But I think I will leave that out of my standard 'host speech.'
Comments
I wanted to reply to Ed Frey’s comment but “anonymous” has disappeared from the “reply as” list. What happened?
Here is my reply: "I can't verify these stats, but this report says 36 humans were killed by pit bulls in 2017. http://www.animals24-7.org/2017/12/16/virginia-pit-bull-fancier-22-sets-new-record-for-pit-bull-deaths-in-one-year/
But I just switched it back to accept anonymous commenters.
But even with a new record for the pit bulls the risk of dying in a bathtub is almost 10X higher, yet the perceived risk is that the pit bulls are more dangerous.
kaBLOOnie, thanks for bringing back Anonymous that also brought back Name/ULR which I like to use.