Being Canadian in Los Angeles: A Survival Guide
In Canada or in the US, I’m fine with coyotes. Except at night. At night they become drunk bloodthirsty long legged elves and that’s a no, bruh.
Listen, I was once so Canadian in front of my friend, Alex, she tells the story to this day.
We are at her place in the hills. It’s dark. We hear a noise. A branch snaps.
Alex: “What was that?”
Me: “Shh.”
I listen with the intensity of a frontier woman checking for raiders. My covered wagons will not be commandeered. I hear faint fast noise through the trees.
“It’s a roof rat. Norway rat. You got yourself a rat. Listen to it.”
Alex died laughing. Today, when she tells the story, she mimes cupping her ear while dead serious, declaring, “You got yourself a rat.” I still don’t understand why this is funny. It was a rat. We saw it three minutes later!! Also, as a kid, Alberta was a rat-free zone. They couldn’t make it from the west over the Rockies and (same issue) there weren’t farms close enough together (for shelter) to travel in from Saskatchewan or up from Montana. Desolate. Desolee, Ratatouille.
This is peak Canadian behavior apparently: 1. Animal identification in complete darkness. 2. A history lesson on The Alberta Rat Patrol. 3. Skills nobody asked for.
When I first moved to Los Angeles from Calgary, I took inventory on new ground creatures. Possums. Rats. Yard lizards. I rank them by threat level like I’m conducting a wildlife census.
Edmonton, my hometown, is the furthest most populous city in North America. It’s so profoundly different in Alberta. It’s wild. I grew up with the northern lights as a regular Tuesday night. A bear walked into the hospital where I delivered 3 children over 7 years. Same hospital room. Same bed. One-time bear. I can build a shelter insulated with cow shit and hay. For family vacation, we went on cattle drives for other families. Nature provides free cryogenics for a portion of the year. I regularly ate meat my friends gave me after a hunt. I can play hockey, I can fix your John Deere. I know that moose and elk are not cute forest friends. They’re massive machines with hooves.
And I am more afraid of yard lizards in Los Angeles than I am of bears.
Let me explain the psychology here.