To each his own fear
If there is one animal I am fully uncomfortable around – or truly scared of – whichever way you infer it, it is none other than a wild bear. Having said that, I have had the liberty of lying very close to a fresh, odourless, dung of a Black Bear ( Ursus americanus ) in the temperates, always wondering if the bear was still around, or had simply trailed away on his daily trot as I was lulled to sleep by some outworldly forces. I do not know until this day if I really slept through it as I waited in the hide, or was my body innately reacting by feigning death to the presence, or the unknown absence, of the bear in the vicinity. But no bear sniffed me that day, I believe, however my imaginations opened the doorway to vivid dreams, exciting but downright scary. On the other hand, I observed that even man undergoes thanatosis, just as the little beetle you scared the hell out of, when you grabbed him off its perch. That was three years ago, and only a year before I had had the ...