Nature is NOT Your Friend
   
Reading today's LA Times story about the guy who was killed by the grizzly bear in Alaska I began thinking about all the people killed or injured over the years by thinking that dangerous animals and nature in general were somehow their friends. The most recent example is Roy of Siegfried and Roy but there are numerous other than him.
Take Deborah Franzman, who was killed by a 19-foot great white on August 19 while swimming with seals in Central California. I sea kayak and am always leery when seals pop up around me because great whites love seals, they're their favorite food. So when a great white shark looks up and sees a swimmer frolicking amongst what to it looks like a delicious buffet there's bound to be trouble ahead.
Then there is the case of the women in Maui who after seeing a bunch of fins in the water decided that she wanted to go "swim with the dolphins." She's swimming with the fishes now because those fins were sharks and they enjoyed her for lunch.
Then of course there was old Harry Truman (not the former president). Harry insisted on staying at his lodge at Mt. St. Helens even as he was warned the mountain was going to explode. He insisted "this mountain will never hurt me" and maybe it didn't after all. When the avalanche of boiling mud and gas blew his lodge away at speeds faster than 600 MPH I'm sure he didn't feel anything, much less pain.
With all of the idiots out there that take enormous risks it's a wonder we don't hear of more fatalities like the ones I've described here. Nature is cruel and capricious and if you believe any different you're risking your own life.
3:13:52 PM 
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