Living with wildlife can be intriguingly pleasant, as it is for us, or it can also be dangerous if people are unheeding about your surroundings and the circumstances of weather and time of day. When we're driving at dusk or when dark falls around where our daughter and granddaughter live, we're aware always of the potential of coming across deer dashing out onto the road.

Just a few days ago a young couple recently married met with an unfortunate event. Another car hit a deer and the deer was sent flying into the windshield of the vehicle the young man was driving, killing him in the process. There is now a new widow in the area. The people whose car had hit the deer suffered no consequences. Undoubtedly the deer itself met its own death.

This, and other quite similar incidents, has renewed a call to the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources to call for a deer cull. They have estimated the deer herd size in the area to be around 400,000 and feel there is no need for a deer cull. There is a need for people to be more vigilant when they're driving in rural areas. Though deer have been seen in the urban spread as well; another hazard to be aware of, when driving responsibly.

For us, the closeness to nature given our suburban setting, offers only pleasure. At the thought of the raccoons coming around regularly, absent winter hibernation, to feed themselves at our compost. And, at this time of year, when it's so cold and snowy, we leave out daily peanut offerings to squirrels visiting at our side door.

And then, in other parts of the world there are other hazards living in relatively close contact with wildlife peculiar to one's area. This brief news article out of The Associated Press a case in point:

A Burmese python, one of two python species found on Bali. Photograph: Joe Raedle/Getty Images

A python strangled a security guard near a luxury hotel on Indonesia's resort island of Bali on Friday and then escaped into nearby bushes following the deadly attack. The incident happened around 3 a.m. as the 4.5-metre-long python was slithering across a road near the Bali Hyatt hotel, said Agung
Bawa, an assistant security manager at the hotel. The victim, Ambar Arianto Mulyo, was a 59-year-old security guard at a nearby restaurant. He had offered to help capture the snake, which had apparently been spotted several times before near the hotel, located in Bali's Sanur area, Mr. Bawa said. Mr. Muly managed to secure the snake's head and tail and put it on his shoulders, but the python wrapped itself around his body and strangled him, said Mr. Bawa, who was present during the attack.

Presumably, 'the attack' was initiated not by the snake which was merely going about its alarming business, transiting from its home through an urban area or vice versa. It reacted as any creature might be expected to, being 'attacked' by another animal with which it more or less shares the ecosphere.

Unfortunately, when human animals challenge other types of creatures whose environment they share, on occasion the humans get the short end of the stick, although usually it's quite the reverse.