camping.

Angela has long accused me of being an unsatisfactory outdoorsman. Apparently, before our marriage she was somehow under the impression that I was the type to camp for long periods, to shave my face using only a straight edge and frigid mountain stream water, and to jump at the chance to remove the skin of a sentient being whose life force I had just watched slowly seep from its eyes due to a bullet accurately discharged into the artery in its hindquarters. Yet, to her chagrin, our marriage has proven many times over that I am just not a big camper. She thinks it stems from an excessive attachment to my electronic devices or a desire to limit my oft-repeated tendency to somehow manage to transform my pant leg into a conduit for any camp fire built within a football field's distance of me. But that's not it at all. I avoid camping because of one thing—mountain lions.

A few years ago, I saw a Discovery Channel special on mountain lions. Before this time, I knew them only as the cartoon-y mascots of local high schools. After watching this program I came to understand that mountain lions are, for all intents and purposes, just like the infamous African lions of the Serengeti, except that mountain lions live in the mountains by my house. The way I figure it, never in a billion years would I opt to unroll a sleeping bag on the plains of Mozambique or Botswana and attempt to nap, knowing full well that all that separates me from a pair sabre-esque canines sinking themselves into my neck flesh is a thin layer of tent fabric. This being the case, why would camping in Arizona be any more acceptable, given that all that substantially differentiates a mountain lion from an African lion is a mane—a hairdo, really. To me, a murderer rocking a pompadour is no less or more scary than a murderer with a buzz cut. Hair just isn't of prime concern. The way I see it, the teeth are just as powerful; the claws are just as deadly; between the cats there is no appreciable difference in hunting acumen, especially if the prey they stalk is a group of vacationing suburbanites occupied by the challenge of bending a clothes hanger in the most optimal fashion for s'more production.

I think an important difference lies in the way a person would react when attacked by these two different lion varieties. Amid the grasslands and herds of hippopotami, to be attacked by an African lion would be horrifying, but not necessarily shocking—like being mugged on a street you knew you shouldn't have walked at so late an hour. But to be attacked by a lion while hiking the hilly nature trail a stone's throw from the Circle K where you and your friends purchased Thirst Busters for the trip—that would be truly shocking. And I think it'd be a real pity to spend my final moments on earth reflecting not of my wife, or family, or of how I probably shouldn't have embezzled those hundreds of thousands of dollars from that Alzheimer's charity (they don't remember anyway), but wondering to myself, "Am I really being attacked by a lion? In Arizona? This doesn't seem right."

It is this scenario of a distracted and mis-focused demise, in concert with my historical preference to not be mauled, that causes me to conclude that camping is just too risky. Especially when a microwaved s'more provides about 85% of the tastiness of a camp fire s'more.