Animals don't have to be grizzly bears, or moose to be dangerous. Sure, you want to watch out for the big ones, and you certainly don't want to hit a moose, caribou or bear with your car. The moose never wins that confrontation, but sometimes the people don't survive, either.
Consider the lowly mosquito. You can drive into and through millions of them with no effect except a really messy vehicle, and you have to get out and clean the windows periodically. But how many times must I almost drive off the road because I'm trying to whack the little sucker? I'm an idiot, of course. I can ignore a mosquito when they are batting against the side window, I can ignore them when they are behind me and I can't see them, but if they are right in my viewing area they are dead meat. Unless I crash while smashing them. Then we are all dead meat.
It's been super hot here in the Interior, have you heard? Wearing long pants into town is not gonna happen. I'm wearing shorts because there are no mosquitoes in town. They are all waiting at my house to get the drop on me when I arrive at home.
I'm not making this up.
I just got back from town, started to get out of the car and WHAM a mosquito flew into my EYE. So of course in reaction to this I banged my knee on the car frame (emitting the appropriate words) and managed to stagger to the front door and slap about twenty mosquitoes off my arms and legs and feet and then fall into the house and slam the door.
Five minutes of further slapping and swearing and I'm mosquito-free. For now.
Of course it's too hot to leave my dogs in the car. They have to come into the house. They can't stay out there. I'm tough, I say. I can take it, I say. I'm an Alaskan, I say. I don't have to put on long pants. I can do this! I put down my purse and packages and prepare to dash to the car and get the dogs.
Only to see, just as I reach the back of the car, a HUGE hornet zoom up and start "smelling" the hatch that I have to open to get the dogs out. I wait. Doing the Slap Dance. Hornet is still sniffing sniffing. I know better than to wave at a hornet. Waiting and slapping, dancing, going ARRRGGHH and SHIT and DAMMIT and still the hornet is fixated on the SUV door hatch. Wait! It's landing and....trying to crawl under the crack of the hatch. Oh God.
RACE back into the house. Grab the household cleaner (Fabuloso!) in a spray bottle and sprayed that little fucker! He went, WHOA, what the heck? And fell off the car, got up and zoomed BACK TO THE CAR and I just let him have it a couple more times and he FINALLY zoomed away. Meanwhile my arms and legs are getting whiter from the amount of blood I'm losing to mosquitoes...
Grab the dogs and RAN back into the house. Smashed a lot of mosquitoes. I'm sure there will be more wandering around the house that I'll have to get. I hate those little suckers!
If you wait around long enough I'll tell you what it's like to be in a vehicle with two predatory dogs and one very angry hornet.
