The Call of the Wild

Editor’s note: The article you are about to read was originally written in 2007 by my mum, an all-round amazing woman. Today would have been her birthday, so I am publishing this article in her memory. Mum was simply the best person ever, who inspired me to start writing myself. It’s an honour to be able to share some of her work with you. I hope you all enjoy another sliver of my mum’s brilliance and insanity.

THE CALL OF THE WILD

I do enjoy good David Attenborough documentary very much. I like the gentle, old-fashioned, school masterly tone of his voice and his obvious fondness for his subject but my favourite thing about them is that all the large, scary and/or highly poisonous animals can be viewed from the comfort of my sofa. They are usually many miles away from me and, most often, not even on the same continent. This makes things much safer and significantly less alarming.

Since the sad demise of Steve Irwin, we no longer have someone to dice with death at the hands – or claws – of the largest and most terrifying wildlife, on our behalf. If we want to find out what will happen if we find a large crocodile, stick our fingers up his nose and wait for him to try and bite a chunk out of us we now have to do it ourselves. Personally, I’m not keen. I like my limbs where they are and would prefer not to see them sticking out of an angry croc’s mouth.

Sadly for Mr Irwin, his premature death just goes to show that creatures that we think of as relatively or completely harmless can still prove to be lethal. Stingrays are not normally known to attack but as the unfortunate man discovered, they sometimes will.

It is scary to note that you don’t have to be a daring documentary maker or work in an African safari park to be in danger from wildlife. People have been known to be killed in Australia by kangaroos. Some are foolish enough to challenge one to a boxing match and end up with their heads pummeled and nether regions scratched off, but most are killed when they hit one with their cars. Kangaroos are big (don’t let Kanga and Roo from Winnie the Pooh fool you – they are actually enormous) and if you drive into one, it will probably just scratch itself and hop away, while you are left bleeding to death in a tangled mass of metal that was once a robust 4×4. The same goes for horses. Even if you survive the initial impact, should you hit them hard enough the force may encourage them to come and join you in the front seat for a bit of a sit down which will render you flat and dead. Either way, it’s not good.

Cows can be quite lethal too. Don’t let their quiet, mooing, cud chewing demeanor fool you. Our bovine friends can do you quite a mischief. As well as deploying the same automotive method as kangaroos and horses, they also have another weapon in their arsenal. Just look at the male of the species. Then just look at what he does to Spanish Bullfighters with his horns. That would at the least make you wince and at the most would leave you needing surgery to have his horn removed from its final resting place in your throat. I have no sympathy for the bull runners in Pamplona, however. Anyone stupid enough to run through the streets being chased by 7 or 8 of these monsters deserves to be run through with 2 ft of cow extremity.

If we move further down the size scale the danger is still very much apparent. Dogs can turn on you with shocking speed and savagery. One minute they are quietly humping your leg and the next they might be trying to eat your face. Apart from attacking you they can still cause you serious injury. Imagine you are carrying a large sharp knife across the kitchen and Shep jumps up at you in a playful manner to indicate that he would rather like to go outside for a doggy slash. The next thing you know, you trip over him and are laying on the lino with a carving knife sticking out of your neck watching Shep weeing on the rug because you are unable to open the back door for him on account of the fact that you are bleeding to death. Scary stuff.

Cats are the same. My family were amazed to hear about the concept of the ‘cat net’. My aunt had one for my cousin. In the days when he was born in the 1970s it was a well known phenomenon for cats, when browsing around looking for somewhere nice and warm to curl up and take a nap, one of their locations of choice often included a baby’s face. Hence a net, like the ones you can buy oranges in, were affixed to the front of the pram to prevent your moggy making itself comfortable in the wrong place. There are also extreme cases of cat related death. If a man, while stroking a cat on his lap, manages to upset said moggy in some way it may choose to dig its claws into his scrotum. Aside form the inevitable discomfort and damage to potential fertility this would cause, he could subsequently die from blood poisoning. Yes, lads – it can happen. It really is a jungle out there.

Go down in size a little more and even then we can encounter real peril to life and limb. Gerbils are renowned for sinking their teeth into your thumb and not letting go for quite some considerable time. Perhaps for three weeks or more. It becomes quickly apparent that living a normal life would be seriously impeded with 4 inches of angry rodent attached to a sensitive part of you.

Historically, small furry mammals were used during some of the more significant military campaigns, for example Alexander the Great utilized the vice-like grip of the gerbil to hold together his armour and also there is the legend of Genghis Khan’s notorious iron-plated battle hamsters. And of course, if you are not extremely careful, you can choke to death on a squirrel.

Last, but not least comes anything smaller than the above i.e. the insect world. We all know about the much publicized, extremely lethal varieties of spider, scorpion etc. that – in Australia particularly – lurk in your shoes, you breakfast cereal and under your toilet seat. But there are others that can cause just as much peril, pain and nastiness. It really hurts when a bee stings you! Wasps are very vindictive and will happily sting you for no better reason that they just don’t like your jumper. Flies will spend an hour chowing down on a large lump of warm, wet poo and then fly over and casually land on your sandwich. Any of these can cause you to die horribly from ailments ranging from extreme allergic reaction to dysentery.

So there you have it. Conclusive proof – as if we needed any more – that it really isn’t safe to go outside. If I were you I would just curl up on the sofa with a good book and wait until everything goes extinct. At the rate we are going, I’m sure it won’t take very long.