I know, I know, from these posts, you'd think that California is all sunshine and lollipops. But let me tell you a secret. In California, deadly things lurk at every turn. I know this because I just confronted my first poisonous spider: a brown widow.
I failed to take a good picture of this beaut' because I was only willing to view it through the balcony's sliding door. However, it had a telltale orange splotch on its belly. (Was it an hourglass, exactly? I wasn't close enough to see, but what else has an orange splotch on its belly??) It had created a web stretching from the side of our camellia planter to the balcony wall. For hours, it just hung there, upside-down, giving me a good, long look at its belly.
I hate killing things, but this sucker had to go. Sorry, spider. I can be deadly, too. (OK, I'm being a bit unfair to the brown widow. Apparently their bites are rarely deadly.)
I have also been watching Shark Week on iTunes, where I learned that great white sharks are coming closer to shore than ever before. Tagged sharks were even traced to one of their favorite local hangout spots—right under the Santa Monica pier!
And don't even get me started on mountain lions, rattlesnakes, and everything else that can kill you on a hike.
Now, I know that these species are all largely misunderstood and that probably 99% of the time, deadly encounters are either very unfortunate mistakes or human-incited (shark thinks you're a seal; you stepped too close to a snake's hideout). But...they can still KILL you. So could a rabid subway rat, I guess, or a diseased pigeon, but this is a pretty big wildlife shift from the sights of old NYC.
image credits: shark, mountain lion
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