mrs. tennessee and i have something in common

This poor woman (from the tennessean):

Ryan and the other Mrs. America contestants were making their way to rehearsals in a ballroom when she was startled by a spider on the stairs. (She was bitten by a brown recluse as a child.)

In an effort to escape the spider, the Tennessee representative backed up near a rattlesnake that was camouflaged on another step. Ryan, who said she didn’t even see the snake until it was too late, didn’t step on the rattler but still got too close for comfort from the snake’s point of view.

A few months ago I decided to take a step onto our back porch, which is something I don’t do often enough. As I was walking around something caught my eye, about 7 feet off the ground in an eve… I focused a bit and found it was a 6 foot long snake, attempting to shed, like 6 inches from my head. I reacted in the most reasonable way possible for a grown adult male, I yelped and jumped backwards. It was at that moment that my foot hit a big rock, or so I thought. I turned around and saw a huge tortoise of some sort on the ground, and then it tried to bite me.

This is why I write software in a nice air-conditioned room on my treadmill desk… nature might eat me.