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0 pointshilbert421y ago0 comments

"I grew up on a farm in Saskatchewan,… …outside shooting pellet guns, catching snakes, feeding kittens, riding dirt bikes my whole childhood. "

I had a similar outdoors childhood in a town of about 10k people in a mountainous area about 70 miles from the State's capital city. You can never explain to those who've not experienced growing up that way about how wonderful it is.

One exception however, catching snakes was a no-no for this reason: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_brown_snake (read the fine print about how venomous it is).

I accidentally stepped on one when I was about 14 and luckily I'm still here. I was running along a bush track and turned into a right-angle bend and the snake—which was out of sight round the bend—was sunning itself in the middle of the track and I couldn't pull up in time—and squish!

The snake shot off in one direction and I did the fastest back-flip in my life in the other direction. I was trembling with fright for about ten minutes after that.

"… No rats."

Perhaps you shouldn't advertise the fact that Saskatchewan is ratless as you might have an influx of migrants (of the human kind that is).

On second thoughts, the last time I was in Saskatchewan (over two decades ago) it was so cold I may as well have been in Antarctica.

Perhaps rats are smarter than we think. Being in 'Antarctica' is just a bit out of their comfort zone.

BTW, I used to keep white rats and mice as pets when I was a kid (they were fun, I used to leave their cage doors open so they could roam and they'd return after exploring).

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nightowl_games1y ago

So you'd see rats as a kid? Honestly I don't even know how big/scary they are. I feel like I'd find them frightening.

Only harmless Gardiner snakes here. My dad always hated em tho. His childhood house was infested with em.

There's mountain lions roaming the plains here and they are scary AF. I find them even scarier here because you can see them from a long ways away, and you can tell when they are stalking you. It's safer, because you can see em and they know you see em, but it's scary when it's following you from 500M away.

And yeah, it's extremely cold here. Cold here today. It gets colder here than in the Arctic some parts of winter. It's life threatening. There's a kind of fear of nature present with everyone for about 4 months every year, November - February.

In the US, northern Idaho and Montana are beautiful, people in the states are sleeping on that part of their country.

The best part about growing up on a farm was probably watching my dad wake up every day at 5 and work until sunset with no boss and only his own brain and braun.

Really made me a fiercely independent person.

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