Mother Nature is Some Scary Chick

So, in the interest of trying to get out there and do more outdoorsy, nature-y stuff, my husband and I thought we would take advantage of hiking in one of the various beautiful parks Illinois has to offer, like Starved Rock or Pere Marquette. (Okay, is THIS how you're supposed to make money with blogs?  I promote their parks, and now the State of Illinois will just send me money, right?  This is hard!!)

But to kind of work up to that - and because I had heard there could be large mountain lions or cougars in these treacherous natural areas, no offense, Illinois - we thought we’d start out at a nice, safe, local forest preserve or park first.

Well, the walk started innocuous enough except for the fact that it was August and kind of a hot day (August? Hot? Go figure. I know, right?), so I kind of had a little headache and after we parked the car (oh yeah, you don’t thing we’d WALK to a hike, do you?) I asked my husband if we could walk down the street to the local coffee shop for a little proactive headache caffeine.

After a much needed frothy frosty Frappuccino (okay, Starbucks, I'll be waiting for that check, now) for fortification (alliterative alert – oh wait, that's another one -  I can’t stop!), we walked back to the starting point, which, by the way, was along a very busy street with cars and trucks barreling down on us constantly (way more dangerous than any potential cougars, I will tell you).  Finally, we made it back to the parking lot and proceeded to head in the direction of the official designated hiking area.

We started to stroll through a little innocent looking grove of trees apparently imported from the Spawn of Satan Rainforest.  Mosquitoes the size of bats were swarming around us the entire 15 feet it took to exit this shaded Hades.  We then had a brief respite passing through a beautiful, perfectly manicured park (much more my style than that unpredictable natural stuff) before we finally entered the much anticipated actual hiking zone that was the prelude to our actual hiking trail.  (I'm really building the suspense here, right?)

A few bicyclists passed us on the path, some looking a bit sketchy, and I thought alleged cougars (of which we had seen none, by the way – whew!) were not the only danger to concern oneself with in open hiking terrain where there were many convenient places to hide a body.  It was a marsh-like biome, with a meandering path and suddenly, a park bench!  By now we had invested all of 25 minutes (including the caffeine detour) and needed a bit of a breather (you have to build up to this level of endurance, people) when what did we see but a solitary, majestic deer.

Now, somewhere in my husband’s research of wildlife he had apparently learned that deer travel in twos or threes and to never, I repeat, NEVER, get between a mother deer and one of her children.  Well, no sooner had he informed me of this time tested hiking lore than, of course, we see what appeared to be a teenage deer (which, of course, we could tell by the rather sullen look on his face which just screamed, “whatever”).

So, our strategy was to stay on the park bench and wait out the ferocious deer gang.  We hoped they would just move past our stealthy, pathetic selves and we could continue on our Iron Man Survival Gauntlet.

After about another 20 minutes of waiting, talking with more passing bicyclists who managed NOT to fall off their bikes laughing when we told them of our dilemma, we finally called it, scrambling quickly back to the safety of our air conditioned Honda Accord (ahem, Honda, do you need my address for that check?) vowing to live to hike again another day when more stringent laws regulating wildlife behavior had been instituted.