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Dangerous animal of the month—scorpion

Animal encounters

The scorpion has earned a dangerous reputation by virtue of its sharp, venomous stingers and disconcerting habit of sneaking into houses and tents in search of good nap spots. And its fearsome looks don’t help. But the truth is, this bad reputation is mostly hype. It turns out that nearly all of the known 2,000 [...]

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Book review—Walking the Gobi

Desert adventure

Helen Thayer has had Indiana Jones-caliber adventures, but her story will likely never be captured on film because she’s a) female; and b) elderly. Too bad, because Thayer’s tale of her epic 2001 walk across the Gobi Desert in Mongolia could be an amazing movie. For now, her well-crafted book Walking the Gobi: A 1600 [...]

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Extreme sports for all

Explore

Though extreme sports used to be dominated by male athletes, that’s not the case today. Women are taking their love of athletics to dizzying heights and setting new records along the way. Here are just a few examples. One of the very first women to muscle her way into the extreme sports scene was freeclimber [...]

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Dangerous animal of the month—saltwater crocodile

Animal encounters

Not only are Australian saltwater crocodiles huge (averaging 15 feet long and tipping the scales at 1,000 pounds), they are fantastic swimmers and are often spotted far out at sea. For those of us who thought sharks were the only gigantic, prehistoric killing machines in the ocean, this is a rude awakening. Depending on where [...]

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Dangerous animal of the month—king cobra

Animal encounters

Here’s an odd fact: though a king cobra’s venom can kill a human in 15 minutes, it can’t kill a mongoose. That’s because the mongoose has evolved high-tech defense systems in its blood that reject the snake venom. And what’s with the fancy name, anyway? Unlike other venomous slitherers, the king cobra hunts and eats [...]

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Book review—The Devil’s Teeth

Animal encounters

When a fascination becomes an obsession, things can get a little bit wiggy. That’s how it was for Susan Casey. In 1998, the New York-based journalist watched a BBC documentary about a “Sharkwatch” program on Northern California’s remote Farallon Islands that was revealing some startling new facts about great white sharks. Operating on a shoestring [...]

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Book review—Rowing to Latitude

Ocean adventure

It’s refreshing to read about an adventurer who isn’t in the game to break a record or drum up sponsorship for the next trek. Author Jill Fredston is both a gutsy outdoorswoman and a talented writer. She and her husband—both avalanche experts based in Alaska—spend every summer exploring the far north by boat. Together, they’ve [...]

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Dangerous animal of the month—box jelly

Animal encounters

Who knew that jelly was dangerous? Actually, scientists have been trying for years to rebrand jellyfish as “jellies,” since they aren’t fish at all. These odd, transparent creatures live underwater like fish, but since they have no backbones they belong to the group of animals collectively known as invertebrates. They pulsate around the ocean mostly [...]

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Dangerous animal of the month—Brazilian wandering spider

Animal encounters

While researching this month’s dangerous animal, we learned two things: first, spiders make humans hysterical; and second, spiders are woefully misunderstood. Apparently most of our fears about spiders are myths, from “the average person swallows four spiders per year in her sleep,” to “My neighbor was bitten by a brown recluse and his leg nearly [...]

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Book review—Crazy for the Storm

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When 11-year-old Norman Ollestad boards a chartered airplane with his father, Norman Sr., and his father’s girlfriend, Sandra, en route to a ski championship ceremony in the California mountains, he experiences a feeling of deep contentment. As the small plane cruises over rocky peaks, young Norman realizes he’s finally becoming an elite athlete—his father’s pushing, [...]

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