Guts Read Online Free PDF

to them.
    We have grown away from knowledge, away from knowing what something is really like, toward knowing only what somebody else says it is like. There seems to be a desire to ignore the truth in favor of drama.
    Most people have heard of bear attacks, and we may know about moose attacks and wolf attacks (some rumors of which I believe are true, having seen wolves kill), but the truth is that more people are killed in North America by white-tailed deer and mule deer than by any other animal. Not just hurt, not just bruised or pushed or bumped, but killed. Most of them are killed in car accidents involving deer, but a goodly number are killed by direct attacks, especially in parks or other areas where wild deer have become used to people and beg for food. Many years ago I saw a small boy who couldn’t have been four years old killed by a white-tailed buck in a state park.
    It was not a petting zoo, but several half-tame deer would wander among the tourists, who fed them candy. It was early summer and a young buck—he had only a forked horn, still in velvet—had attached himself to the child and his mother. The child was eating those little white mints with the Xs across the surface. He gave one to the deer, and the buck took it gently enough and for some strange reason liked it. I was also young—about fourteen—and though I had hunted and killed deer by then, I viewed this buck as cute and a pet and not something to hunt, not something wild. I didn’t understand when he stamped his feet in irritation if the child took too long to hand him another mint, didn’t understand that it was a warning.
    The deer ate four or five mints. The boy’s mother had a camera and had backed away to get a better shot.
    â€œHold the candy away from him,” she told her child. “Make him reach for it so I can get a picture. . . .”
    The child took a mint from the package and held it out to the deer, which reached forward to take it; then the child pulled it back. The deer lashed out with his front hooves— two slashing jabs so fast, so incredibly fast, that the only thing I would see in my life to compete with it was a rattlesnake strike. I did not see motion. Just the boy standing there; then he was down and his chest and stomach were turning red where the buck’s hooves had stabbed him. There was nothing, not a thing that all the dozens of people standing around could do. The strike with razor-sharp hooves was so lethal that even now, looking back, it is hard to believe. The pointed ends of the hooves were like small spears; they were in and out and had killed the little boy before anybody could move.
    I can still see all this so clearly, and then there are only images: the mother with the camera half down, mouth open, eyes just beginning to show horror; the crowd of tourists, one man with popcorn halfway to his mouth, another lighting a cigarette, the match burning, glowing; all eyes on the deer, the small deer with blood on his hooves and forelegs, stamping his feet in anger, and finally the little boy, still and so small, lying on the gravel pathway, not terribly far from a sign that said Don’t Feed the Deer.
    Mosquitoes.
    Hatchet
shows how Brian had to deal with mosquitoes, and many of the letters I have received ask if they can really be that bad.
    Of all the creatures on earth the mosquito is far and away the most deadly to man. Thousands of people die each year from many different strains of malaria or dengue fever. Whole populations have been wiped out by these two diseases—and they are both transmitted by the bite of mosquitoes.
    When you consider that only half of all mosquitoes bite—only the female feeds on blood—these numbers are even more remarkable. One female mosquito can infect and possibly kill several people by biting someone with malaria or dengue fever and then spreading the disease by biting others. The death rate over the years is simply staggering,