I was looking for pictures of a brown recluse. I recently saw a spider that had a back marking like a fiddle in my house, but it was on the abdomen, not the back, so it was not a venomous recluse. Apparently Wyoming is somewhat outside their territory, too, so that makes me more sure.
One of the websites I found had sections on "field hazards" and I was poking around and found this tidbit on defense against cougars:
You can also try to suffocate the cougar by forcing your closed fist way down its throat. The idea is to reach down the cat's mouth as though you wanted to grab its stomach and hold your fist there until the cat stops moving. This requires that YOU become the predator.
Wow. That would be a hell of a thing to do. It reminds me of a technique used to fish for octopus in some parts of the world. Two divers go down and find where a large octopus lives -- this apparently is easy since they leave the remains of their prey scattered about. You stick your head into its den, and let the octopus attack you, and attach to your face (this gives me Alien flashbacks). Then you swim back to the surface and let your buddy kill the octopus and get it off your face. I'm not sure I have any friends I trust that much!
But I live in the mountains, not the coast, so I don't have to worry about the devil fish. I do have to worry, a little, about mountain lions. We had one in town a few years ago that had to be shot -- it had happily set up camp under somone's house and was eating pets. We have many in the nearby mountains (along with moose, the rare bear, perhaps wolves). One of the astronomers at our observatory found lion tracks around the dome one morning last fall.
I don't expect to be attacked by a mountain lion since I'm not that small, and I would consider it a special thing to catch a glimpse of one, but if I am attacked I'm not shoving my freaking fist into its mouth!
I'll save that for a character in a future novel.
Posted by Mike at April 26, 2005 10:24 PM