Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 22, Number 85, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 July 1901 — Only Requires Nerve. [ARTICLE]

Only Requires Nerve.

The Forest and Stream says that nearly every one has a fear of wild animals, and yet no wild animal will fight unless wounded or cut off from all apparent avenues of escape. All animals will try and escape if given a chance, This fear is kept up by all sorts of bear, wolf and snake stories, most of which are magnified to make heroes of hunters. There is more dangler from natural causes in a visit to wild animal haunts than from the animals. There is more danger of slipping off a precipice or falling into a river than from being "hurt by a bear or a wolf. Many more people have been killed by lightning than have been run over by stampeding buffalo herds, or killed by wounded grizzly bears, or by all the other animals of the prairie put together. One might almost say that more people have been struck by falling meteorites than have been killed by panthers or wolves. And yet from day to day the newspapers continue to print bear stories, catamount stories, and wolf stories, and probably they will do so until long after the last bear, catamount and wolf shall have disappeared from the land.