Comment on I've never been in a situation where me having a gun would have made things bettter.
AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world 2 weeks agoSounds like good advice. Between the armadillos and the prairie dogs, I’m convinced that the entire “Great American Desert”* is actively trying to make us deathly ill.
*I’m using the term the way the stagecoach settlers did, meaning everything west of the Mississippi till the Rocky Mountains.
AnarchoEngineer@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
Gila Monsters definitely give some Australia vibes. They are kinda cute chonky reptiles even if they are venomous
Rattlesnakes are another fun venomous reptile, though they’re much more common and more likely to bite you than Gila Monsters. It’s always a bit of a scare when you’re hiking and suddenly hear a rattlesnake start warning you but you can’t even tell where it is. Like pick a lane buddy, either camouflage/hide yourself or try to tell me where you are so I can avoid accidentally stepping on you, don’t try to do both at the same time lol
Of course in the reptile cases, the animals rarely bite unless you’re actively antagonizing them, but still a bit scary to have
We’ve also got scorpions everywhere out west. If you ever come out to the Rocky Mountains or the deserts around them, bring a black light flash light out at night. You’ll be able to find a ton of the fluorescent green critters crawling around in the sagebrush. They only get about 3cm long, but they are “the most venomous scorpion in North America” haha I’ve never been stung and Ive caught several before, but the venom can cause full limb paralysis, can feel like “lightning” even a while after the initial sting, and there are a reported deaths from it
And we’ve actually got a ton of different stinging/biting wasps and bees and creepy vibrant colored things like mud daubers. Oh and those Velvet Ants which are nicknamed “cowkillers” because they’re bite is painful enough to kill a cow (it isn’t really of course)
Definitely not as much diversity as Australia, and most things here will leave you alone if you leave them alone, but there are plenty of things that will, at the very least, ruin your day if you’re not careful