EL SEGUNDO HERALD October 28, 2021 Page 13
Travel from page 3
Istanbul:
You can’t climb up to the towering Pera
District peak from the Galata Bridge, and
the funicular closes at 10pm. So, when we
showed up after dinner at 10:16, we were
stuck. I refused to take a taxi, so we ended
up wandering for three hours around to
the back of the mountain. Centuries ago,
the Ottoman Sultans carved this area into
compact commercial communities to keep
tabs on their foreign merchants. The alleys
and arcades—none of them bothered by a
street light—had changed little when we
tiptoed through in the eerie, silent dread of
that January night.
Mexico City:
We only include this one because of the
sheer volume of knowledgeable advice we’d
received from gringos who had probably
never visited the city. Never take a bus or a
green taxi and, above all, stay away from the
red lights of the Zona Rosa. As it happened,
our hotel lay on the edge of the Zona, and
from the day we arrived, we took buses and
green taxis everywhere. But the high point
was a political demonstration that erupted on
la Reforma. A local news cameraman spotted
Glinda taking photographs and started a
conversation. We peppered him with questions,
until he offered to park his wife with
me, while he guided mine into the middle of
the chaos. In case you were wondering, our
Glinda is no wallflower.
The point being…
Most travel risks fall into four broad categories:
Disease, crime, anger, and your own fear.
The first two exist everywhere and can
be contained with intelligent preparation
and reasonable precautions. Long before
COVID-19, there were yellow and dengue
fevers, malaria, rabies, grisly infections, and
all manner of hypothetical medical mishaps.
And yet the world continued to turn, human
beings slept, ate, and rode trains and buses—
and toured the world. Crime will probably
be with us until we’re uniformly poor and
satisfied with a drab equality. But criminals
spend more time than you think picking their
targets. Your job is to avoid gifting them with
a nice, juicy target.
Anger, on the other hand, shifts with the
winds of religion and culture and the global
competition for resources, but mostly with
the leadership cycle in a given country. Right
now, is probably not the best time for an
American to go people watching in a bar in
Kinshasa or Caracas. Probably not the best
time to try out your new bikini on the beaches
outside Riyadh or Casablanca. Beirut was a
paradise in the 1950s and a catastrophe from
the 1970s onward—but who knows what will
greet you in another few decades? Vietnam
has gone from American bugaboo to the best
kept vacation secret in Asia.
In other words … When gossip and paranoia
edge out research and common sense, when
you pull back from true experience because
of the ugly thing that almost happened to
that friend of a friend of a second cousin,
you forfeit to the biggest risk of all—doing
nothing. In future articles, we’ll get into the
weeds of specific adventures, but for now,
keep this in mind: Risk is not binary. It lies
on a fascinating continuum between minimal
and foolhardy. And you have much more
control over where you land along that line
than you might want to think.
And no, there is no sharp point awaiting
you at the tippy-top of a Swiss Alp. But keep
trying—we certainly will.
Next up: How We Re-invented the Orient
Express and Found Dracula Along the Way.
Ben & Glinda Shipley, published writers
and photographers, share their expertise
and experience of their many world travels.
If you have any questions or interest in a
particular subject, please email them at
web@heraldpublications.com.•
Friendly fires on la Reforma in Mexico City.
Stromboli belches, a storm approaches—time to cut and run.
Therapist from page 5
Coyote Safety from page 5
mendation is to keep them inside and close to
you when they have to be outdoors. Coyotes
have been known to attack small dogs, even
if they are leashed. Walk dogs on a short
leash, and pick them up if you spot a coyote.
Keep cats indoors, especially from dusk to
dawn, which is when coyotes hunt the most.
Why are coyotes brazen enough to attack a
dog so close to a human? “Because they’ve
been habituated, which means they’re used
to not feeling in danger of people, and that
goes into how we can help,” he says, “It’s
called hazing coyotes.”
A coyote runs down Penn and Sycamore. Coyote activity has been spotted across residential El Segundo. Photo credit: Olena Anderson.
Don’t just film and flee. If you see a coyote,
the best thing you can do is make yourself as
big as possible. Scream, shout, throw things,
make it uncomfortable. Short of running at
it, because it is a wild animal, the idea is to
show the coyotes that they will not enjoy
their time around humans. This hazing is
recommended by all groups, from humane
societies to the California Department of
Fish and Wildlife.
Helpful tools to walk with are air horns,
pepper spray, and whistles. If you really want
to discourage a coyote, special coyote sprays
are made, as well as wolf scents. Coyotes
are lower on the food chain than mountain
lions and wolves and will react accordingly.
To further protect your home, motion sensor
lights and devices can be installed. One
system even flashes a set of red eyes, tricking
the animal into thinking a bigger predator is
stalking them.
Then, once you hazed the coyote, Corkins
recommends calling El Segundo’s animal
control officer Joe Camagong at (310) 524-
2231 and reporting the sighting so they can
keep track of locations and numbers. Though
a coyote attack is considered an emergency
and should be reported to 911 immediately,
a coyote sighting can and should be reported
for purposes of collecting data.
Typically, coyotes don’t attack humans. A
coyote rarely injures a person, and in most
cases in which this has happened, it was because
of proximity to a den or because of an
owner fighting the coyote in the case of a pet.
Though they are a predator and the city is
working to ensure the safety of El Segundoans,
coyotes are not all bad news. They keep the
city rodent population in check, eating rats
and mice. To eliminate coyotes completely
would mean upsetting an entire ecosystem
that relies on the predator/prey relationship.
In addition, lowering a coyote population too
fast, artificially, can force them to adapt and
begin breeding at a younger age, to increase
the chances of pups surviving.
For now, it’s a matter of educating yourself
and your neighbors on coyotes, reacting to
their presence in a way that’s big and loud,
and taking preventative measures to eliminate
food and shelter as much as possible. •
they would have been had they faced a few
tough times in their life.
But it’s tricky. How do you balance a
natural desire to protect your children or
loved ones with the knowledge that life is
hard and that nobody can protect people from
everything? How and when do you consider
the role of adversity? Do you try to introduce
situations - I’m thinking competitive sports
- where your loved ones will “safely” face
adversity? Not a bad idea, but probably not
going to solve everything.
I doubt very much that you’ll be able to
convince them to look outside of their beautiful
walled gardens. But do try to give them
a bit of a break. Your loved ones’ positions
are supported by our positivity-all-the-time
culture. We like our evil unseen, unheard,
unspoken, and un-sought-out. Maybe they
will surf that wave forever. But more likely,
you will have to take a deep breath, resist
the urge to tell them you told them so, and
do your best to be there for them when the
wave crashes.
Please write to tom@tomandrecounseling.
com or text to 310.776.5299 with questions
about handling what is affecting your life,
your family, the community or the world.
Tom Andre is a Licensed Marriage & Family
Therapist (LMFT119254). The information
in this column is for educational purposes
only and nothing herein should be construed
as professional advice or the formation of a
therapeutic relationship. •
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