Columns and Letters

Column: If you think COVID is all you need to worry about in a lockdown…

February 24, 2021

 

Anchorage, Alaska – An Alaska woman had the scare of a lifetime when using an outhouse in the back country and she was attacked by a bear, from below.

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    Being ambushed by anything is never much fun, be it a bear hibernating in an outhouse or a politician’s apparition on your doorstep peddling promises that fail the smell test by a nose-wrinkling mile.
    This Alaskan woman’s shock, though, has to be the most startling encounter with any kind of wildlife in this century. Desperate circumstances can send any of us dancing towards a public lavatory or a middle-of-the-woods outhouse, never thinking that...
    The biggest fears I’ve ever taken with me into an outhouse has been the thought of a wasp with a sense of humour, or getting a paper cut from a glossy page torn from a catalogue. Getting bit on the butt by a bear was never among my long litany of worries and fears. Now it is #1 with a bullet.
    There was an ancestral time when encounters with wildlife were the norm.
    We all shared the same environment, so waking to the sense of a snake wrapping itself around you like a warm duvet, or a pack of wolves seated at a nearby table waiting for your fire to fizzle out was the standard stuff of life and death…mostly death.
    Humans, seduced by their own rumours of being the most intelligent of all Earth’s creatures, decided we could change the environment. And we did. Whether or not we did it as intelligently as we tend to flatter ourselves depends on which humans you ask. (Humans have been at least intelligent enough not to poll other species on this question.)
    In order to make the planet safer for humans, we did things like clearcut continents and exterminate down to a micro-existence about a billion buffalo. This allowed us to build countless acres of trailer courts or, in an architectural eureka!, learned to make vertical trailer parks reaching all the way up to the penthouse. Aside from domesticated felines and canines, caged canaries and carpet fleas, we are wildlife-free and can now sleep safely. To ensure that safety, we even moved our outhouses indoors, a place where not a lot of bear bites have been recorded.
    Reading about this woman’s outhouse encounter with a hungry bear in Alaska, brings back vivid memories of my own similar encounter.
    In the summer of 1972, I was a stranded hitchhiker in Rivière-du-Loup. That night, I unrolled my sleep bag, removed my sandals, took care of my pre-sleeping habits and slipped into the mobile motel room I had been carrying on my back.
    A moment later something cold and clammy slithered across my right foot. No circus performer ever shot out of a canon faster or further than I did that night, all the while providing a chorus of my own sound effects.
    I grabbed the sleeping bag and gave it a vigorous shaking. Out of it fell a toad about the size of a quarter. I survived with neither rabies or warts, but a strong case of empathy for people experiencing the same wildlife terror. Well, maybe a bear and a toad rank some distance apart of the Scary Wildlife Scale, but for a few seconds at least that little toad was an anaconda.
    But just when you thought it was safe to take a seat in your favourite meditation room, CTV issued a report under the headline: From bats to pythons, how to keep unwanted visitors from your toilet.
    How is a person expected to cope with all the wildlife that has wiggled or squeezed its way through sewer systems that are suppose to be running the other way, removing from our midst all that for which the body has no further dietary use? The CTV article recommends that “Animal proofing your home is the best solution to prevent unwanted guests from paying a visit.”
    This recommendation involves making certain there are grates, mesh, or wire screen covers around pipes and other vent openings around the house. (Our experience is that they may or may not work on field mice.)
    Should a person not want to risk a midnight encounter with sewer dwellers, there is one other option not mentioned in any of the “protect yourself” literature: Are you potty trained?

 

 

 

 

 




 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


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