FEARS!!!!!!!!!

“Whats the scariest thing that has happened to you while you were camping, hiking, climbing or whatever you do?”

“Scaling a very wet 30 foot near vertical cliff with tiny hand/footholds in the rain with a 50 lb. pack during a solo trip up Slide Mountain in the Catskills.”

“this one time, when i was at band camp.. . . . .”

“I saw Jerbear's butt.”

“Gunpoint.”

“The time a bear slept in our camp after snarfing our food.”

“I woke up and it wasn't a dream.”

“Two words: goats blood”

“A skunk was waving its tail at me and I was in a bivy”

“I was hiking on the AT, climbing up Roan Mountain, climbing, climbing, climbing, and climbing. I was still climbing when night fell, and the wind fell harder, and a storm threatened to fall hardest. And then my headlamp batteries expired. I climbed the last 3 or 4 miles to the next shelter in pitch black with no torch, ever afraid of losing the trail altogether, or breaking a leg. Eventually made it to the shelter, but there was no one there to greet me. One hiking buddy overshot the shelter in the dark, the other wimped out at the foot of the mountain. That was the first night I spent alone on the AT, and it was spooky, and cold, and the rats did their rat things.”

“Whoa, dude! Were they BFR's, with DTL's?”

“SD & I climbed a Class2/Class3 14er, and on the way back I ended up on a 5.8 face (thought I would try a "easier" way), with no ropes and a 2000' drop. I was really worried about getting out of it alive.”

“Once I was in a kayak and I was messing around and it tipped over and i couldn't get out. I was just lucky that my cousin was right by me or i would have drowned.”

“The second time I'd ever been backpacking I was with my nephew. It was his first time. When we pulled up to the trailhead he asked me if there were any snakes in the forest. I told him the trail guide said there were rattlesnakes and copperheads but that they were not common and that we did not have to worry about them. An hour later I ate my words.

We'd just stopped to take a break
when he got his pack on before I got mine on. I told him he didn't have to wait on me, he could go ahead on the trail and I'd catch up. He got about 30 yards down the trail and yelled SNAKE!!! I figured he was pulling my leg. I walked up and sure enough laying flat out on the trail was a snake. I got closer to see what kind of snake it was when it coiled up and started rattling at me. My nephew had come within 2 feet of actually stepping on it. I'd never seen a poisonous snake in the wild so it kinda shook me up that my nephew could of been bitten. After our weekend trip I got home and did a little research on rattlesnakes. I guess only 1 percent of people bitten by a rattlesnake actually die. I'm still much more cautious of where I'm walking now when I'm in the forest, especially when I'm solo.”

“Ants are the creepiest things no matter where you are. the plot, plunder and murder and its only time befor they decide to turn against the whole of human kind and enslave us or use us like cattle.”

“I met Nigal once. That was perty scary!

;)”

“Hey, Rugerman. BBQ'd buzztail is pretty good eatin'.”

“Everytime I went camping, hiking, climbing with my ex.”

“Fire ants advance north
The barrier limiting the northward spread of destructive fire ants may be crumbling.
22 December 2000
JESSA NETTING



In 1918 a few stowaways from South America arrived on North American shores, dug in and made themselves at home. Since then, the descendants of these imported black fire ants (Solenopsis richteri), and their red cousins (Solenopsis invicta) that followed, have advanced across the southern United States, rooting out other insects and stinging humans and livestock in their paths.

Now new findings hint that the temperature barrier keeping the northward spread of these destructive fire ants in check may crumble, if a hybrid of the two species proves better than either parent at bearing the cold.

Old models of fire-ant expansion, predicting that Tennessee's cold winters would freeze the ants out, may be faulty, according to a team from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Shannon James, Roberto Pereira and Karen Vail announced their findings last week at a meeting of the Entomological Society of America in Montreal, Canada.

In the wild, ants take shelter in burrows, the researchers argue, so the kind of below-zero temperatures that early models used would be rare.

Farmers, ranchers and environmentalists are alarmed by the kind of 'scorched earth policy' operated by the imported fire ants, that leaves few native insects alive and harms workers and cattle. This testy creature not only bites when disturbed, but also circles its tightly clamped jaws, stinging its victim in a burning, blistered ring.

James tested the long-term survival of the ants at temperatures near freezing and found that a hybrid of the two species lives longer at cold temperatures than either of its parent species. In the lab, 80% of hybrid ants survived for more than seven days at zero degrees centigrade, compared with only 20-40% of the parent species.

"I think they're really on to something," says US Department of Agriculture entomologist Sanford Porter, who studies the control of fire ants with parasitic flies. More research like this will be key to marking out the northern limits of the fire ants' range, he believes.

Distribution maps show that the hybrid lives in the overlap directly between the ranges of the red and black ants. Cold tolerance could help hybrids shift farther north.

But cold tolerance also depends on behaviours such as moving deeper underground, Pereira points out. Just as wearing warm clothes has extended our cold-weather tolerance to match that of Arctic mammals, behavioural factors may mean that all three varieties could already be at their northern limits.

Other ants have staged similar, far-reaching invasions. The pharaoh ant (Monomorium pharaonis), which originated in India or Africa, became a common nuisance in European hospitals 100--150 years ago. With a taste for blood products, pharaoh ants find their way into dressings and intravenous lines, spreading bacteria.

"They'll traipse around in cesspools and garbage and then go climb around on your toothbrush," adds David Williams, an ant-invasions expert at the US Department of Agriculture in Gainesville, Florida.

The populations of introduced ant species like this often explode, he says, because they leave behind their natural enemies: competitors or diseases. But cold has usually blocked their spread.




SEE? PROOF! I'm not just being crazy....”

“You have proof AND you're crazy. These are not mutually exclusive qualities.”

“A tiny mouse
in my house
takin` a look see
I saw it, he saw me
not scared at all
and him so small
not afraid like he oughtta be
I caught it up, but set him free
now I`m kindda feelin` like a louse
but I didn`t want him in my house
for some reason I don`t think he was the only one
but he was the one I found and him just havin` fun
neither of us a bit scared, or the least afraid
no traps were set, I didn`t use a can of Raid
will I see him again, will he write, that`s not clear
we met by accident and I just wanted him outta here
now to him and his kin, they can`t stay
I`ll catch `em up and send `em on their way
furry little buggers, I`ll get his mother, siblings and her spouse
I`m not mean at all, I just want those critters outta my house”

“Ascending Saddleback with a full pack in the Adirondacks I looked back and down. That mountain and I became lovers fast!”

“1. polar bear

2. July 4th 1999 bwcaw, storm of the century, trees were falling all around us, one nearly hit us, made it out without a scratch... someone was watching over

3. and there was a few times on my hommes, paddling across open water, wide open, Nueltin lake, in the wind, having to cross, a little much weight in the front, water coming over the bow, could have meant disaster, we made it across, that water was cold, would have been in big trouble if we swamped.

4. there's been a few times that i've swamped while running whitewater that were pretty freaky, coulda easily ruined our trip by a stupid mistake.”

“LOL,.. Geobeet!;)”

“Stubbing my toe once on a fern.

Close second scare was in the Olympics. Had seen plenty of bears during 5 days solo on Skyline trail. The last night camped front country at Lake Quinault I had seen a juvenille bear (a real bad character, mohawk, tats, prince albert, the whole deal. what is todays youth coming to ?) in the neighborhood. Later, just after dark, after returning from a cleansing in the facilities, I was finishing organizing my site when... there it was ! All of a sudden, as I turned around, the fierce beast was there, maw agap, eyes blazing w/ blood lust, looking to TAKE ME OUT. AAAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW !!!! Oh... it is just a kitten... They have the right idea in the orient, a little salt, a little pepper, and voila !

Then there was the time I fell at the top of a 50 foot fall and slid to a stop w/ my feet hanging over the edge.

And all unendurably inane cohorts I have had to tolerate for miles on end.

Thats all.”

“1) Rock jumping a few years back across a strong stream near the Smokies. My sister fell in. I caught her, braced myself against a rock and pulled her out.

2) Standing on top of the Sleeping Giant near Thunder Bay, ONT and watching storm clouds build in the distance, knowing we had to climb down through a lot of nasty stuff.

3) Camping at Elkmont in GSMNP a few weeks after a woman was killed, and partially eaten, by a bear. I had to turn my (headphone) radio on that night so I didn't think about it.”

“Me too, Geobeef. Then two easters ago, just below the summit dome of Algonquin I planted my ice axe and took off my rucksack to add a layer and the axe fell over and started to slide. I turned to grab it, but I was wearing crampons and fell on my face.

I slid down and over the lip to the other lip and stopped beside my axe with my head over the edge looking down at the half-pipe trail that climbs out of the trees. I was amazed when I went back that summer and saw just how far I slid. I lost two finger nails from scraping the ice and had the worst case of shakes ever. If I'd gone over that far from the car (and perhaps off-trail), I'd have been in serious trouble.”

“I had got caught in the worst storm ever while Backpacking on Pictured Rocks.

Lighting had hit two trees very very close to me and the winds were above 70 MPH and it scared the Fuc&en he!! out of me.

8o”

“Spirit Coyote, your post is frightening. Fire ants are absolutely vicious creatures. They're one of the reasons I rarely backpack here in the Deep South, besides the heat and humidity.

If they head north into the east Tennessee mountains I'll really be disappointed. There's already reports they've been spotted in Blount County.”

“OMG! honey! pack yer bags! we're movin tonight!”

“In '97 I was manning the Clay Butte Fire Tower in Wy. In one 40 minute storm I counted 171 strikes, three of which hit the tower. I t made me appreciate the insulators that were on all the furniture legs so you could get yourself up off the floor.”

“Pulled over for speeding by this big bald headed cop last week. He says, "Registration and license please".
I say, "What's the problem officer?".
He says, " You were doing 84kph in a 50 zone."
I say,"I was keeping with the flow of traffic."
He says, "You're the first car in the pack.....don't I know you?".
I say, "Yes, I'm the one that gave you and your partner cold water last summer when you guys were parked in my parking lot radaring cars."
He says, "OK, I'll give you a chance this time...that could've been a $220.00 ticket and 3 points."
I say, "Thank you very much...I'll watch my speed."”