What stuff on your street could kill you? (The lock-your-doors-and-hide-under-the-bed thread!)

[Minibit]

Did you know that ordinary weeds like poison ivy, oleander, and rhododendron can be lethal if ingested or if you breathe/touch too much of them? Fire ants, some spiders, and black flies are the same!

Get out your inner agoraphobe and tell us what's lethal on your block!

I live in the suburbs, but we do occasionally get a moose or deer wandering into town, bears more rarely. Squirrels and chipmunks have a horrible bite when cornered, and when I was four I fel on a fire ant nest and couldn't get up because they kept biting me; black flies also swarm about in the summer, and mosquitoes come in absolute clouds. It's a forestry/mill work town, too, so we sometimes get smog from the mills

 

[October Knight]

I live in the city so there isn't much threat from natural things. The gangs, drugs, drug addicts and shootings can be pretty lethal though.

 

[Lady Sabine]

Ah... well, the deer around here are only 100-140 lbs so they don't kill anything that doesn't hit them while on a motorcycle.
The neighbor down the street has a Doberman* but she's genuinely the shyest and most docile dog in the entire city. Never barks, never goes farther than two feet from her owner's heels, more scared of me than I am of her.
There is a cliff! It's only like... fifty feet? But it's a cliff. I could fall off of it or something.
I guess I could drown in the creek below it but it's genuinely ankle deep and that would take talent.
We sometimes get West Nile and Lyme disease and shit from the mosquitoes/ticks/fleas, but it's November and I don't get bit often.
Oh, there are like 7 wasp nests on the eaves of the house, but they're pretty nice neighbors and we let them live there because they keep away other, more annoying bugs. And I don't have big reactions to stings.
There are plenty of poisonous plants but I don't plan on eating anything that I don't know what is. Indian food aside.
I guess we could get a rabid raccoon, fox, or possum?



*I don't actually know what she is. She's not as big or stocky as a rottweiler but she's not as "pointy" as most dobermans and I'm not really familiar with dog breeds. I just know she's one of 'em with a bad reputation for being mean.

 

[Minibit]

the deer around here are only 100-140 lbs so they don't kill anything that doesn't hit them while on a motorcycle

Deer hoofs are ridiculously sharp and hard; a minivan once hit a deer ona highway near my town, the deer went right into the windshield and at that moment, everyone was fine. Then the deer decided it wanted out ; no survivors by the time it was done kicking and flailing. Bucks can do nasty things with their racks, too

Deer scare me a little bit

 

[Lady Sabine]

Deer hoofs are ridiculously sharp and hard; a minivan once hit a deer ona highway near my town, the deer went right into the windshield and at that moment, everyone was fine. Then the deer decided it wanted out ; no survivors by the time it was done kicking and flailing. Bucks can do nasty things with their racks, too

Deer scare me a little bit

I'm pretty sure your odds of getting struck by lightning are higher. On a similar note, a household cat is capable of ripping open your veins and making you bleed out, but it's really not likely enough to consider. Deer hooves are capable of killing, but not designed for it or very good at it. Getting kicked by a cow is deadlier by far.
We have had one person killed in living memory by a deer by any way other than automobile accident, but it was a hand-fed buck who got pissed that this random stranger didn't have candy corn for him and so he kicked/gored the poor dude. Hand-feeding any wild animal is a recipe for disaster and I also don't consider this likely enough to be a problem.
The other thing about deer "attacking" is that, being that they're so light, it's pretty easy to grab/tackle them and hold 'em down, and they're usually more scared of you than you are of it.

 

[Minibit]

You guys aren't very good at the make-your-neighbourhood-sound-scary thing V_V

 

[Karsikan the Berzerker]

well every summer we have to have the bear shaman go out into the woods to keep his kin in line.

 

[Dawn]

Deer and bears around here are used to humans. Most of them just run away. I mean, if a black bear is hungry enough, it's going to maul the life out of you so it's not like we're super chillax about them wandering through town.

We never get moose in town because we're poised on the edge of the military's firing range. Moose tend to avoid the loud booms of anti-tank weaponry.

We get foxes, wolves, coyote, and fishercats nightly and all of them are vicious little pricks. People don't have outdoor cats anymore because the fishercats in particular keep tearing them to shreds. The problem with the smaller wildlife is that they, too, are used to humans, but they're not afraid like deer and bears are. They'll waltz up to your kid in the backyard and steal the sandwich out of his or her hand. Luckily no hands have been snatched in the process. Yet.

As for plants, poison ivy and poison oak is common because, come on, we live in the middle of a forest. I discovered that my dog was getting severely ill from eating these red berries growing on a bush that was creeping through the fence. Turns out it's got a high amount of cyanide in it. Yay.

Bugs. Ugh. The forest sucks. And while the only really lethal bugs travel on produce from the south (like Black Widows and Brown Recluse), we do have some creepy crawlies that, if you're bitten, will leave you feeling like you're going to die. The biggest culprit is the Wolf Spider. These ugly mofos grow BIG and their bite has enough venom in it to replicate the worst flu you've ever had if you react badly to it. My aunt once was bitten on the face by one of these jackasses and they had to rush her to the hospital because that side of her face was so swollen she couldn't see out of her eye and she described the pain as akin to laying her face on a hot plate. Wolf Spiders are the mean stereotypical jocks of the spider world around these parts. They'll chase you. They'll jump off of a wall or tree just to get to you. They have no fear.

We also have a ridiculous amount of ravens, crows, and turkey vultures. All three of them have been known to attack people for no fricken reason other than maybe they saw the movie Birds and thought it was cool.

As far as I know, no poisonous snakes around here, and while Ontario does have a desert, I think it's too cold for things like lizards and scorpions. :P

 

[Kylulu]

When I lived farther north than I am now, we used to get bears and cougar sightings within the town every once in a while. Cougars were rare though.

Now I live in a nice little suburb. Bears or large cats around here. But there are Coyotes. Lots of them. They generally stay away from the city, but every so often, they come in and cause a panic. We also got a moose once!

I'm not sure about any of the plants around here, but the city is built quite close to the side of a river. There are a lot of dirt paths people have made walking the cliffs beside the river. (I call them cliffs, but they're really only about 10-12 foot drops.) The problem is that the edges of the cliffs are eroding away. Sometimes, huge chunks slide into the river. The footing is also quite treacherous if its rained at all in the past two days. Oddly enough, no ones fallen in yet. (My bike has. That was fun to explain.)

We're still too far north for most poisonous spiders or snakes to live around here, but its been steadily growing warmer each year. They're starting to push north, and they'll be here in a matter of years.

 

[TheFoxMaiden]

I live out in the country in NC. So we have bob cats, coyotes, bear, wild boar, red wolves, and several species of snakes. Plus we have our few murders here and their. So if they wildlife don't get you, some of the people might.... Sad to say but its true. My neighbor back when I was younger was murdered over a drugs. Was pretty scarey when something like that is so close to home.

 

[Lonely Angel]

I'm in the bugs and deer category. Generally though I'm kinda creeped out being home alone at night. All the houses are set apart and we have the woods at the edge of the backyard. Plus there's the occasional domestic /drug /drunk fights.

 

[LogicfromLogic]

Imagine, Spokane Washington 2013;

You live in the city. You were from the country but moved up to the city for a change of scenery and to go to college. You don't face bears, deer and moose anymore, no, now you face pick pockets, drug addicts being chased by drug lords, gangsters, wanna be gangesters, and oh dear you find fecal matter on the sidewalks. And people who don't like to use turn signals and almost hit you with their ghetto held-together-with-duct-tape-because-bitch-we-poor car.


Ah the dangers of living in a city.