HUMANS MAY BE SCARIER THAN WILD ANIMALS

It's summer, and the predators are out again.

Last Wednesday, The Tribune reported the first shark sighting of the
season, off Morro Bay. On Friday, the front page carried a big story on a
mountain lion spotted at an Arroyo Grande children's camp.

Speculation and worry, of course, ensued.

Is it safe to go to camp? Should we stay out of the ocean?

It shouldn't come as a huge surprise, living in a semirural county on the
ocean, that there are animals on the land and in the water.

At least we haven't scared all of them off yet.

Let's not forget there are plenty of places we could live, a lot cheaper,
where long miles of asphalt would conveniently separate us from everything
but goldfish and chihuahuas.

So as we head into a Summer of Fear, I thought a little perspective might
be in order.

I needed to look no further than a few of the metropolitan newspapers in
our great state.

On Wednesday, the day The Tribune reported the shark sighting, the Los
Angeles Daily News ran an item titled, "Meth intrudes in grad ceremony."

A 14-year-old, about to take the big step up to high school, began vomiting
during the ceremony at Wilson Middle School. Yes, middle school.

"Authorities were investigating whether her mother supplied the drug,
police said."

Yeah. Mom allegedly also wrote a $15 bad check for the cap and gown, which
is understandable because she really needed that money to buy her
daughter's graduation gift from the local drug dealer.

Same day: "Woman, 88, carjacked at mall," read the headline in the
Sacramento Bee.

Her assailants were a pair of juvenile delinquents out on "weekend passes"
from the Boys Ranch.

They wanted her Toyota Camry so bad they sliced her leg with a knife and
then threw her out after she struggled with them (go grandma!), police said.

Also that day in the Bee, a high school girl testified in court that a
classmate reached up her skirt and assaulted her. He's up on charges that
he raped one girl, tried to rape another and grabbed two more.

On Friday, the day our mountain lion was reported, I checked Bay Area papers.

In San Francisco, Kai Hau Chung, 63, was tending his counter at the Video
Galaxy store on Noriega Street when two thugs held up a patron at 9 a.m. (I
didn't know these people got up that early).

Chung chased after them, but at the door one robber shoved him back,
throwing him into a display shelf. The head injury killed him.

In Oakland, witnesses said someone walked into a near-empty Fisher Memorial
Nondenominational Church and opened fire. The victims, reportedly a man and
an elderly woman, were hit but not killed.

"Mama, we gotta get out of here because they're trying to kill us," a
witness heard the man say, according to the Oakland Tribune.

Yes, we've got some wild animals out here in the sticks.

But I'll take 'em over those animals in the city -- any day.

Silas Lyons' column appears every Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday.