Small beasties:
The Silicon Valley has fleas, ticks, scorpions, and black widows, but fewer mosquitoes. But the mosquitoes may very occasionally carry West Nile virus, and ticks can carry Lyme Disease or Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever.
The Tanana Valley has none of the above, but many, many, many mosquitoes. On the other hand, the mosquitoes are not vectors of any known illnesses. In other words, none that can kill you, only annoy you, but annoy you so very, very, very much!
Medium-sized beasties:
The Silicon Valley has raccoons, skunks, weasels, rats, gray squirrels, opossums, coyotes, jackrabbits, and rattlesnakes, to name a few. Of these, only rattlesnakes and raccoons are real hazards. A rattlesnake bite can kill. Raccoons steal your food when you are camping, and if you're backpacking and depending on every calorie, this sucks. The rest of the critters are theoretically pests, but I like them. :)
The Tanana Valley has red squirrels, flying squirrels, ravens, wolverines, porcupines, and beavers, to name a few. Hmm... this doesn't even sound like a list of pests, just little critters. None of these bother me at all! Except for the slight fear that my dogs will entangle with a porcupine.
Large beasties:
The Silicon Valley has mountain lions. The Tanana Valley has mostly black bears and the very occasional brown bear.
There are way fewer mountain lions in the Silicon Valley than there are black bears in the Tanana Valley (0.031 mountain lions vs. 0.076 black bears per square mile, respectively), but mountain lions are more frightening to me because they would very much like to kill and eat you. They would stalk and pounce on you, catching you unawares, and would have every motivation to kill you for a protein source. Black bears are mostly vegetarian and generally only attack people when you startle them, stumble on their food stash, or come between a mama and her cubs. And they are likely to back off if they realize that you are not a threat.
The problem with taking comfort in this, of course, is that even if a black bear does not have strong motive to kill you, it can hurt you very seriously, very easily, with just a casual swat of a paw. The other thing is that they would steal your food at night, so you need a bear can to camp in the wilderness. Mountain lions, on the other hand, are not known for stealing Clif bars and cheese! Black bears also sleep all winter, while mountain lions stay awake, looking for things to eat (like suburban pets and small children).
And those are my musings on the less charming of beasts. :)
3 comments:
B's house has tiny spiders and few to none mosquito. No large beast at all, Lemmacat is the only medium-sized beast.
Your old place too. Just think about no more mosquito bites when you come back.
Hmmm... I guess I had thought this all out from an "outdoor" frame of mind. If you never leave your house, you won't encounter any beasts at all, whether in Alaska or California.
Just think about no dangers, annoyances, or discomforts at all, if you never leave your house!
Hmmm... it sounds very comfortable and peaceful, but it's not a life that would suit me.
I *liked* the medium-sized beasts outside my old place! I used to feed the squirrels, and there was a burned-out light at the end of the street where I'd sometimes go with binoculars to look at stars. One night as I was standing there, a family of BABY SKUNKS came waddling by! They were so fricken cute!
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