All in the head

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Some lucky people have a blood type that draws mosquitos. Wherever they go mosquitos find them, whatever time of day, it doesn't matter mosquitos will appear. I've always thought that those overly paranoid people must make it all up, it's all in their head. Then they complain, probably just for the attention.

WWU's nursing dept is going back to my school in India in 1 week.
Another blog about that soon ...
A few weeks ago I was taking a trail through the woods from camp to one of the directors' house. Every morning we meet Joe, this particular director, in his garage gym at 6 am sharp for a workout session. I leave camp at 5:45 to make the 15 minute trek to his house. The early mornings there are too beautiful to describe. I wasn't far from his house when I heard some cracking branches coming from further up the trail. When I looked around the corner I saw a moose. Instantly, my brain started thumbing through the stored file in my brain called "How to escape wild animals." Get big and make a lot of noise, freeze, play dead, climb a tree. Climb a tree ... right? I'm standing there frozen in fear. For some reason I had carried my phone with me that morning. I texted my friend, Brooke, to tell her I had crossed paths with a moose and wan't able to make it to Joe's. So she started making her way back down the trail towards camp to find me. When the moose heard her step on a branch he started running down the trail towards me. My brain quickly thumbed through all the possible maneuvers and decided to send me into the bushes, where I rolled a few feet down the hillside. The moose stopped where I had once stood in the trail, looked down the hill straight into my face and then made his way back down the trail. I sat in the bush for what seemed like hours until I heard Brooke tell me it was clear. Since the near death experience, I've been too afraid to take the trail back up to Joe's house, instead I now run up the mile long (40% incline, at least) hill on the county road.

I don't know what it is, but since then I've had this obsessive wild animal phobia. This past week I've been running around my parents house, which is located quite a ways out into the woods. It's nice, the main roads are pretty busy though, so I've tried to find roads with less traffic. Today I ran through a housing development called Elk Ranch Estates, not intimidating at all, right? Who thought that sounded safe? There was no traffic up the hill where I ran at 2 in the afternoon. But I turned a corner to finish the loop at the top of the hill and there stood a big, brown moose on my left. He stood with true authority. My body suddenly froze so that my brain had the energy to quickly access the situation. My heart was pounding again with fear, but this time I had no phone and nobody was around. I quietly turned back around and started walking in the direction I had come. When it was out of my sight I made the rest of my run back home with an extra surge of pounding behind my lungs and I was more than grateful to reach the busy road at the bottom of the hill. It's almost as if moose know I'm afraid, or maybe I'm really just desperate for the attention, or maybe the fear is all in my head.

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