Us animals

Last night I heard a jackal howling for the first time.

Or perhaps it was just a dog?

Did you know that during the Antiquity there were even lions in Greece?

Last year I experienced a real threatening situation here with some animals. They attacked out of blue and I had to suddenly run and hide behind our car trying to protect myself from those dangerous… human beings! Of course. What did you think? Two guys were shooting birds from below our land and their bullets were raining on our field.

Otherwise the most dangerous animal around here is apparently the viper. Wild boars can be a bit unpleasant around this area, too, they say. And scorpion poison is not a lot of fun either (ask Theo!). Most of the animals are very harmless though. Yet isn´t it interesting how we still carry inside us this primitive fear of animals, even spiders or insects that are actually pretty harmless and very rarely cause any damage to humans? They say this fear of animals is something we have inherited through our genes from the past generations who lived in the wilderness and to whom these threats were reality in their every day life.

In reality almost all wild animals are very shy and avoid humans. Tigers are very shy, as I learned during our jungle walk in Nepal where we tried to quietly creep after their footprints. Only if the female has her offspring and you disturb them she might try to attack to protect them. Or if you go and break a wasp hive, they´ll surely attack (ask Theo, he has some fresh experience on this, too!) Otherwise they have no interest nor need to attack us really.

One curios parenthesis about the wasp hives: We needed to get rid a couple of hives that were invading our living space. While breaking a hive Theo got stung by one quick wasp. The curious fact was that later that day and the following day when he exterminated some other invading wasps with every hit the poison in his wound was aching more severely. As if they could revenge his cruel actions immediately – from the other side. It´s pretty incredible how that works. Everything really is connected.

To modern urban humans there are many much more dangerous threats than animals but we seem to take these with a very relaxed attitude: for example shot guns and other weapons, electronic equipment, chemical products, pollution, driving a car, sitting on a chair and staring at computer screen all day long... These cause so much more harm and damage to our health and can even be lethal.

Indeed the most dangerous animal, a way beyond anything else, is human being. As risky as our nature adventures and animal stories may sound we probably have more chances of leading a long healthy undisturbed life living in the nature than we did in a city.