I have blogged a couple of times before about the dangers that wild animals, particularly bears, are for humans when people stop thinking about animals as they are and start treating them like live Disney characters.  The moment that you forget the bear is North America’s apex predator while on a hike, is the moment that the park rangers have to try to identify your body by the bits and pieces they pick out of bear shit.

It may be prejudice on my behalf, but it seems to me that the people that forget about the true power of nature are more often than not Liberals.  I think this is in part because hunters and anglers are overwhelmingly conservative.

To think about the dangers of nature as something that is “out there” far away, something that you have to enter by leaving the city and the suburbs is dangerous.  It creates complicity.  A rattle snake is just a dangerous in your back yard in Texas as it is in the most remote National Park.

Former Texas Governor, Rick Perry, saw some brief media exposure when he shot a Coyote that what threatening his dog during a jog in the Austin suburbs.  I can tell you that we saw Coyote in the Chicago Suburbs, and they were making their way downtown.

I figured that is what happen when I heard about a Chicago Alderman who was injured by a wild animal in a park.  Alderman Howard Brookins suffered a broken nose, a fractured skull, and had five or six teeth knocked, in a run in with a squirrel.

Yep, a squirrel.

Never underestimate the killing power of a wild animal.  It may look harmless, the Rocky the Flying Vector for Infection will mess up your day.

Always be prepared to defend yourself.