I’m going to Arizona soon and I might not make it back alive. If I don’t, it’s been a good run. I’ve scheduled tweets for an entire year after my demise, just to mess with people’s heads. So, keep an eye out for those.
The reason I’m in peril is I’m taking my entire family with me to Spring Training. This used to be a trip in which I went by myself, stayed in the cheapest hotel I could get, watched baseball from sunup to sundown, and ate really bad food.
Now, it’s a family vacation in which we stay in nice places, eat nice food, and take non-baseball-related excursions. It’s the non-baseball-related excursions that will be my demise. You see our youngest son is on an intense exercise regimen and feels that my wife and I should join him on a ten-mile hike when we go. Ten miles. In a row. In the desert. If I don’t die from heat stroke or dehydration, I’m certain a mountain lion or pack of coyotes is going to carry me off.
Imagine the coyote pack watching the trail:
“Here come five possible dinners,” one says.
“The youngest one looks pretty lean. Probably, the healthiest dinner.” The other look at the health-conscious coyote in disgust.
The leader of the pack says, “The slow old guy is the one. Easiest to catch, and with all that fat, he’ll taste like a ribeye.”
“What’s a ribeye?” asks one of the coyotes.
“You’re about to find out,” says the leader.
And they’re off to hunt me down while my family runs to safety.
But that’s not the only danger hidden in the parks of the Greater Phoenix area. Did you know there are scorpions? And people actually go out of their way to hunt them? I discovered this when researching which park I was going to die in. Apparently, scorpions glow in the dark if you shine a black light on them. So, the parks organize night hunts with members of the public.
People actually go out and hunt scorpions! They walk the trails where coyotes are wiping their lips from the baseball fan they ate that afternoon and diamondback rattlesnakes are lurking, to hunt scorpions! Have you seen a scorpion? I’m not talking about The Scorpions that sang Rock You Like a Hurricane in the 80s. I’m talking about the ones with tails that sting you with venom and whatnot.
People shine their blacklights, capture them with tongs, then put them in boxes to study, and then release them. But considering these are members of the public and not trained scientists with hazmat suits, I’m sure things are going awry. And that’s what I’m worried about. If I somehow manage to escape the coyotes on the ten-mile trail of tears, are they going to try to talk me into a scorpion hunt? Because I’m certain that I’ll be the one in the paper the next morning with the headline: Baseball Fan Gets Stung By 100 Scorpions—Park Ranger Says Things Went Awry.
I don’t want to be the subject of a headline where things go awry. So, I can’t give in to the pressure to get ambushed by nature. I think my only hope of making it home safely is to go directly to the Spring Training complex and not leave the entire week. Sleep on the bleachers. No excursions. Hide in a place where the only dangers are foul balls and sunburn.
Carry on, Citizens!
