Death By Vampire Bat

When I was in Brazil, years ago, I hiked into a remote farm and spotted a sad looking horse standing in the field with blood stains streaming down its neck. When I asked the farmer what had happened to the horse, he said it was vampire bats. Made me involuntarily shudder and look up. Of course there were no bats zeroing in on my neck at the moment because it was broad daylight.

Vampire bats hunt by night. Typically, they will land on or near their prey without disturbing its sleep, then creep to a position that will give them good access to blood flow. With razor-sharp teeth, they slit the skin of their victim and then lap up the blood as it oozes out. In most instances, the raid is so gentle that the victim never is aware of the attack until the next morning when the blood is apparent.

The biggest problem isn't the loss of blood — it's disease. Bats are carriers of rabies, and they can transfer the disease to their victims through the open wounds left by the bites.

Up until now, in the U.S., vampire bats have been nothing more than mysterious characters in horror stories. But the recent death of a Mexican teenager who had migrated to Louisiana to work on a sugar cane plantation has brought a focus on the issue of vampire bats and rabies invading the U.S.  And the speed of the young man's death raised eyebrows at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).

According to a CDC report, the victim suffered an especially virulent form of the rabies virus. Normally, the incubation period for rabies is about 85 days, but in this case it was only 15 days. The symptoms progressed from fatigue to shoulder pain, to a drooping left eye, to numbness in the left hand. He developed a respiratory distress and a fever that climbed to 101.1 degrees F. A postmortem test of the victim's brain tissue confirmed a vampire bat variant of rabies.

Of great concern to the CDC is the feared expansion of the vampire bat habitat. The bats are common in parts of Brazil, Chile, Argentina and Mexico, but now appear to be expanding toward the United States. According to a CDC spokesman, "Expansion of vampire bats into the United States likely would lead to increased bat exposures to both humans and animals, and substantially alter rabies virus dynamics and ecology in the southern United States."

A bat attack on a human is not the only way for the rabies to spread. If the bat attacks a dog or cat, or some other domesticated pet or livestock, the rabies virus can eventually be transferred to humans through interaction with the affected animals.

If you think you might have come into contact with a rabid animal, contact your doctor as soon as possible. The symptoms listed above that the Mexican fellow suffered are typical.

Wilderness Meets Urban

Burbank, California isn't where most people would expect to see a wild mountain lion roaming the city streets. But it does happen. In fact, just yesterday evening, residents were placed on alert by city officials because a cougar was spotted wandering around town.

Mountain lions are among the most dangerous predators in the wild, because unlike bears that will respond with an attack when surprised or cornered by humans, a cougar will actually stalk a person until an opportunity arises for a planned attack.

A friend of mine was stalked for 7 miles by a cougar that stayed about 100 yards behind him all the way from the campground until he reached his truck. He kept a wary eye on the lion all the way back to his truck and told me later that he knew that if he ignored the cougar, it would sneak in close and jump him.
I have no doubt of that. It is the pattern for these animals. California statistics kept between 1986 to 1995 listed 9 verified attacks, about one per year in that state alone. Three attacks took place in 1994 alone. The modus operandi for attack is for the cougar to lie in wait, hidden from sight until the victim is close enough. Then the animal leaps on the back of the victim and bites through the back of the neck, severing the spinal column.

An example — On April 23, 1994, Barbara Schoener was killed by a cougar. Since she was alone, there were no eye-witnesses. But the supposition is that she was jogging along a trail and attacked by a cougar that was lying in wait on a ledge above the trail. She was apparently knocked to the ground and evidence is that she fought the animal with bare hands until she was killed. Her body was dragged off the trail and most of it was eaten by the cougar.


To avoid a cougar attack:

• Travel in groups. Cougars are not known to attack groups, preferring to take down solitary individuals. 
• Don't take your pet dog with you into the wilderness. Dogs attract mountain lions, so having one on a leash is like trolling bait through shark-infested waters.

If you are confronted by a cougar:

• Stop. Do not run! Running will trigger an attack.
• Make yourself look bigger by standing tall and holding your jacket above your head. 
• If you have small children with you, put them on your shoulders. That will help make you look larger and also make the kids look less like a convenient meal. 
• If you're alone, attract others to your location, because the cougar likely will not attack when confronted by a group. Yell "cougar" not just "help" to let others know what the situation is. 
• Prepare to defend yourself. Pick up a weapon — rock or stick that can be used as a club. If you have a knife, take it out and prepare to use it. On August 16th, 1994, Robin Winslow used a 12-inch kitchen bread knife to help fight off a cougar that was attacking her friend Kathleen Strehl. During the battle, the cat bit off Troy Winslow's (Robin's husband) thumb, when he grabbed the mountain lion near its mouth. Life can get ragged when you're fighting for your life against a mountain lion. 

Cougars are increasingly coming into urban areas in search of food and water. This often takes place after dark, making raids on food and water dishes left outside for pets. With this most recent sighting in Burbank, city officials again reminded residents to take pet food and water dishes inside at night. And with the cougars boldly prowling neighborhoods, it would also be a good idea to bring the pets indoors after dark. 

Plane Crash

A plane filled with more than 160 people crashed in Guyana this past week, and reports from survivors have brought up some issues we ought to discuss here.

On the news, the footage showing the wrecked airplane were taken in full daylight. But the crash happened at night. The aircraft was crushed and broken in two pieces. The electrical system failed, so there were no lights. Inside the darkness of the fuselage, passengers were confused, terrified, and had no idea where to go to exit the plane.

According to one survivor's report, the man sitting next to the emergency exit door didn't understand how to get the door open.

So, here are my thoughts about this particular situation:

• Pay attention— whenever you board an airplane, memorize where you are sitting in relation to the emergency exits.
• Learn exactly how to operate the emergency exit door mechanism, in case you have to take over for the fellow sitting by the door who doesn't have a clue. 
• Carry a small LED flashlight on your keychain. There are LED lights the size of a nickel that use a button battery, and can be attached to a lanyard around your neck or to your key ring.
• Keep your shoes on during the flight, in case you have to fight your way through debris and then jump to the ground. 

On that last point, when this airplane came to rest in a field adjacent to the runway, no rescuers showed up for a long, long time. Passengers were forced to crawl out onto the wings and then jump 12 feet to the ground. Some suffered broken bones, others were knocked unconscious by the impact with the ground. Those who made it most safely to the ground were:

• Wearing sturdy shoes (no flip-flops or high-heels or other junk that people wear as shoes). 
• They knew how to hit the ground feet first, knees bent, and then tuck and roll to one side to absorb the impact. This is known as a PLF or parachute landing fall. It's a good idea to have this technique in your skill set. 

Heat Index

A hot spell has blanketed some parts of the U.S. for the past couple weeks, and it's become a survival issue for some folks — especially the infirm, the elderly and infants who cannot just get up and move to an air conditioned place.

There's a term called the Heat Index that is tossed around to describe how hot the weather feels. For those not familiar with the heat index, it's a bit like the Wind Chill index used to describe how cold the weather feels under certain conditions.

With the heat index (HI) it's the air temperature and the relative humidity that are combined in an attempt to indicated the "human perceived" equivalent temperature — how hot it feels, not just how hot the thermometer says it is.

A high heat index becomes a survival issue for humans because it thwarts our natural ability to cool ourselves. Normally, humans cool themselves through the evaporation of perspiration. According to the laws of physics, evaporation carries heat away from the body.

But when the heat index is high, that indicates a high relative humidity in addition to the high air temperature. Humidity in the air drastically reduces the evaporation rate, leaving humans unable to cool themselves by that method. You'll work up a sweat, but that moisture on your skin will not evaporate and carry away your excessive body heat. You'll just be hot and wet.

If you don't take measures to counteract the high heat index, eventually, you can fall victim to heat cramps, heat exhaustion and perhaps even deadly heat stroke.

When the heat index is high:

• Stay inside an air conditioned room
• Reduce work load
• Increase water intake
• Take cooling showers or baths

Cyber Survival

It seems like almost every day the news media report on cyber attacks against America. Recently, the Associated Press reported, "hackers accessed the credit card information of North American customers, in an online security breach affecting about 200,000 accounts." And that's only one incident. Millions of people have been left vulnerable to identity theft and other crimes against their finances by hackers from all around the world.

As bad as it is for citizens to be under attack from hackers, consider the damage that can be imposed on the government by computer criminals who figure out how to break passcodes and gain access to sensitive defense information. In 2010 alone, the U.S. government was hit by more than 300,000 separate cyber attacks against its infrastructure. According to reports from government officials, more than 100 attempted break-ins were conducted by foreign governments, trying to infiltrate our military and defense plans. And 2011 is shaping up to be a record year for cyber espionage. Attacks are coming from China, Russia and a variety of locations in the Far East.

Once hackers break into a system, they can take control of it and manipulate it any way they want. They can take money from your bank account, they can order a new credit card in your name and start using it, they can make long distance phone calls billed to your account, they can buy plane tickets in your name (using your identity) and travel the world, they can do things that will get your name placed on a "watch" list as if you're a terrorist.

Even if your own personal identity is never stolen, you might still be victimized by cyber attackers Consider these questions and how they might pertain to you:

• What if the banking system, ATM and checking accounts are hacked, draining money away and into the hackers' hands, leading to a digital banking collapse?
• What happens when the power plants and electric grid, railroads and nuclear power plants become subject to cyber attacks — shutting down the power, disabling water supplies, disrupting transportation and communication systems?

The degree to which we are personally dependent on modern technology will determine the severity of these cyber attacks on us as individuals. For example, if you live without a cell phone, you won't even notice when the cell towers cease to function. If you don't use ATM, you'll never feel the hit when hackers take it down. If you don't use credit cards, nobody can steal your credit card number and run up a huge bill on your tab. You get the picture. 

Urban survival in this era, when the enemy hides behind the anonymity of electronic weapons, means we need to analyze our lifestyles and make adjustments that will take us off the digital battlefield. Some of you have already done that; some are in the process, and some haven't even begun yet. 

To be safe, we need to live under the radar, out of the line of fire of cyber attackers. Be prepared to do without a public water supply, a power utility, a grocery store visit every day. The more prepared you are to be independent, the safer you will be. 

Food-Borne Disease

The deadly outbreak of E. coli in Europe sounds a wake-up call for all of us. Over the course of just a couple weeks, the death toll has reached 33, with about 3,100 sickened by the bacterium carried on food.

One of the problems has been identifying which food to avoid. Investigators have bounced around from tomatoes to cucumbers to lettuce to bean sprouts — at first suspecting each of those as the source of the disease, then later dismissing them. Now, it appears that they are back to pointing toward the bean sprouts as the culprit.

The uncertainty wreaked havoc with the food industry, as customers abandoned first one type of food and then another, leaving farmers unable to market their crops. In addition to the damage that was done to human health, there was enormous damage to the European economy from this little "epidemic."

I say "little" because, devastating as it is to the individuals and families involved, the numbers are puny by comparison with other disease outbreaks that historically killed millions. Nevertheless, it is still a serious problem when officials can't even put their fingers on what is causing the disease.

Hospitals in Hamburg, Germany (seemingly the epicenter of the outbreak), have been overwhelmed. Doctors and nurses are working around the clock trying to keep up with the influx of patients.  More than 700 of the patients are suffering from not only diarrhea and cramps, but have developed life-threatening complications that can lead to kidney failure, paralysis and epileptic seizures. Hundreds of patients are in intensive care. These patients need round-the-clock medical care, working the medical staff and also the hospital cleaning staff to exhaustion.

One of the surprising things about this illness is who it has affected. In a statement by Marc Voss, a senior internist at Regio Clinic Elmshorn, "It has been very stressful for all of us because we are dealing predominantly with younger patients without significant previous diseases." About 77% of patients are women, the majority of them between 20 and 50 years old, most are physically fit and live healthy lifestyles.

How can that be? It's easy to understand when we consider that this particular outbreak of E. coli has been carried on vegetables. The young, health-conscious, physically fit are likely to be eating a diet that includes a lot of vegetables — so they were a prime target.

Does that mean we should avoid eating vegetables? Not at all. In fact, most E. coli outbreaks arrive on meats that have been contaminated during processing. And dairy foods are often carriers of salmonella. So unless you give up eating altogether, there's always a possibility that the food you buy (even organic) might be contaminated.

The solution? Double wash everything. Use a vegetable cleanser such as GSE (grapefruit seed extract) mixed with water in a spray bottle and sprayed onto the food while washing. It's a good idea to wash the outside of fruits and veggies even though you're going to discard the peel (melon, oranges, bananas, etc.) to prevent accidental transfer of contaminants from the outside to the inside.

In this day, when we import so much produce from across the country or around the world, it's a good idea to be especially cautious. But even if you buy all your produce from local farms, that is no guarantee against disease outbreak. For those folks in Germany, the produce came from a local organic farm.

One additional lesson we can take from this incident is how quickly the hospital system can become overwhelmed by even a relatively minor catastrophic event. When something BIG comes along, we won't be able to depend on local medical care or other normal community services. We need to obtain as much training as possible so we are more capable of handling our own situation, insofar as possible. Some crises are clearly beyond our ability to handle without outside help, but we should do as much as we can without depending on the community to take care of us.

Five Rules

Being a competent outdoorsman doesn’t come naturally for most of us. That shouldn’t be a big surprise, because we live indoors, get our water out of a faucet, eat refrigerated food that’s cooked on something other than a wood fire, and sleep dry in a comfy bed under a roof. We don’t grow up hunting everything we eat, shaking our boots out before putting them on, building shelter from natural materials before bedding down in a blanket roll, and bathing in a cold creek while using a bit of sphagnum moss or equisetum for a scrub brush. That’s because most of us live in civilization.

That being the case, it takes some effort to become competent in the outdoors. To be good at living in a camp setting, we have to break the chains of civilization…at least a little bit. Doesn’t mean we have to live in the dirt, sleep with a pinecone stuck in our back, eat semi-raw burned food, offer ourself up to predatory insects, or be miserable in a hundred unmentionable ways. Nope! All it really means is that we need to learn some new rules of life in order to keep ourself safe and happy.

Here are five suggestions to get started:

• The first order of business is to know where you are in relation to where you want to be. It’s called not getting lost. 

A butcher friend once told me, when I was foolish enough to ask him if he ever cut himself, “Heck yeah! I’m a butcher, ain’t I?” I took that as a yes. And the same goes for outdoorsmen — if you explore the great outdoors long enough, it’s only a matter of time until you look around and wonder just where you might be. That’s what we call being lost. It comes from failing to pay strict attention to everything around you…especially the trail behind you.

To keep from getting lost, periodically turn around and study your backtrail. It looks totally different going back on the same trail, so memorize the landmarks — the rock with lichens growing on it, the tree with a goofy forked limb, everything.

I got lost once in a deep forest in Louisiana. Being from the West, I grew up looking at mountainous scenery, using peaks and cliffs and canyons as landmarks while I hiked. Well, Louisiana has none of that stuff, and sure enough, I got misplaced (just another way of saying the L word). It’s a spooky feeling, and I don’t recommend it. So pay attention. Turn around often and memorize the backtrail. If there’s nothing memorable to look at, tie a bit of surveyors tape to a twig so it will stand out when you look back upon it. When you hike back out, take the bits of tape with you, so as not to litter the trail.

• Be prepared to stay longer than originally planned. You never know what’s going to happen, so if you’re out for a day hike, be prepared to stay overnight, or maybe even two. That means some kind of shelter, some food, water and the ability to make fire and signal for help. All of that stuff can go in a couple of pockets, if you choose your equipment well. 

We’re talking the basics here. For shelter, I carry two items — an inexpensive pocket poncho and an emergency blanket by Adventure Medical Kits (www.adventuremedicalkits.com). For food, I carry a few granola bars and some jerky. For purifying water, I carry a Frontier Filter straw by AquaMira (www.aquamira.com). To start fires, I carry a Bic and also a Swedish FireSteel (www.lightmyfire.com) plus a few cotton balls treated with petroleum jelly and stowed in a zip baggie. And to signal for help, I carry a signal mirror and a signal whistle.

• Experienced outdoorsmen make camp early in the afternoon, several hours before sunset, giving themselves ample time to get the shelter up, a fire started, and a good supply of firewood to last through the evening, with some left over to start the fire the next morning. 

• Be prepared to solve emergency medical problems. Even the most cautious life in camp sometimes involves getting a splinter, minor burns, cuts and scrapes. Have a good first aid kit. Expand your knowledge by taking a first aid course. Become competent and comfortable managing factures and sprains, hypothermia, heat-related injuries, CPR, blood loss, shock, drowning, snakebite, and major burns. 

• Finally, the mark of a true outdoorsman is wilderness etiquette — Don’t take noisy entertainment gadgets with you when you go camping. There’s a reason people like to go into the great outdoors for short periods of time — it’s called getting away from it all. What’s the sense of getting away from it all if you take it all with you? 

While boat camping at Lake Powell one summer, we found a quiet cove with an isolated beach, dropped anchor, kicked back and enjoyed the crimson canyon walls and crystal blue water. A hawk soared overhead. It’s the kind of place that causes you to whisper so as not to disturb the silence.

Then they came — a houseboat with a family full of kids. They anchored a hundred feet away, fired up the generator, cranked up the megawatt stereo system, and proceeded to destroy the serenity. I found myself shaking my head in disbelief. We quietly packed up our camp and moved to another canyon.

Real outdoorsmen love the sound of a breeze whispering through the trees, and the chuckle of a stream racing over a bed of rocks. They are polite enough to allow others the same opportunity to enjoy the peace nature has to offer. So my recommendation is that if you absolutely can’t live without noise, at least spare others the annoyance by wearing ear buds or headphones.

So, there you have five fundamentals that can help you become a more outdoorsman-like person.