Having grown up in the wilds of the northwest I’m used to stuff out in nature wanting to kill me. You get used to daddy longlegs chilling and thinking about making you their next meals. My parents lived in the suburbs of Seattle so coyotes weren’t that unusual to see wandering around in the street looking for their next meal. One time, in the late 80′s, my older brother Adam went on a bike ride and ran into (not literally since I doubt he’d still be around to day) a bear out with her cubs. As civilization spreads more and more into the wilderness, the animals who once lived in the wilderness have to adapt to us.

When I moved to Phoenix, to say I was surprised about the wild animals in Phoenix would be the understatement of the year. Yes, I get that it was a part of the “wild west” but, again, it was 2007 and from what I could see of the city there wasn’t much there to make me fear. My brother’s brother-in-law had a horrible scorpion problem at his house but the ignorant part of me figured I’d probably never really encounter anything out of the ordinary in my apartment while I lived there.

Until I found a giant spider in my apartment about a month after moving there.

At this time, I didn’t know Mack, and so didn’t have someone I could scream at while I hid on my bed whimpering and pointing (as I have done since we started dating [Mack's note: she does this about spiders, not about me]). I had to take care of the hideous abomination against mankind, before my stupid cat decided to eat it and potentially kill himself by the spiders wrath.

But, besides spiders, I never really ran into anything horribly nasty in my time in Phoenix. The only time I ran into a scorpion was while waiting outside, in line for the roller derby. I was about to lean back against a brick wall. Lucky for me, Mack noticed the baby scorpion (aka the ones to fear) on the wall, so I kept a respectful distance from that wall, as to not piss off the creature. While out driving on a few occasions, Mack and I encountered coyotes running around in business complexes near our apartment. Mack’s apartment there, before we moved in with each other, was cockroach central (due in no part to Mack but rather the shitty apartment complex) as well as the head quarters to the Kitty Mafia.

But that is a story for another time and another person to tell.

In moving to The South, aka more Georgia then Florida, I have been surprised by the sheer amount of nature out there that is out to kill me. Not only do we have man-eating bees the size of my eyeballs (carpenter bees) roaming around looking for fights, we also have the added joys of the cockroaches, lizards, and other nasty creepy crawling stuff that thrives in practically tropical environments. Also, the turtles. There are turtles everywhere and, as a result, on multiple occasions Mack and I have had to pull a U-turn and save their slow shells from getting pegged, because they were on the road.

As of this moment, here in Florida, it’s 83°F and 75% humidity. To a girl raised in the northwest this is almost Hell on earth.

“But Anne,” you, the reader, could argue, “just because you are disgusted by the creepy crawling creatures doesn’t mean that they are out to kill you!” True, reader, but did you not know that we have alligators here? That like to just chill in puddles? Also, did you know, that they can reach up to 35 mph if they set their minds to it? Luckily, the worst I have encountered of those unfriendly storm drain dwellers is, thus far, in the car as I drive by and cringe into myself and cry to Mack that it looked at me funny (to be read same as: he wants to eat me).

Don’t get me wrong, all you have to do it look at my flickr account to see I love being outdoors and photographing it, but storm drain ninja alligators? Not so much on my list of good times. Perhaps it’s just be being embittered that I am allergic to this state and have had more creepy crawling creatures crawling on me (in bed while trying to sleep… thanks Mack for knocking that ant off the ceiling so it could find its way to crawl up in my arm, in the dark) then should constitute legal.

I guess all I am saying to people thinking of visiting or moving to the south is this: the south bites back… or at least lurks in ditches waiting to stare at you with a hungry glint in its eyes.

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