Hilton Head, South Carolina

July 6th, 2017 in Our Travels Worldwide

I have a sweet friend that is from Georgia and told me to be sure and stop at Hilton Head on our way from Charleston to Savannah. It was a cute town and we had fun climbing to the very top of an old lighthouse.

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Hilton Head from Vanessa Brown on Vimeo.

BUT THE REALLY MOST FANTABULOUS PART OF HILTON HEAD IS AN EXPERIENCE NOT ONE OF US WILL EVER FORGET. We took the girls to a nature preserve they have on Hilton Head. The creatures in that nature preserve started cute. Look at those adorable turtles:

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BUT THEN, Shae saw a snake. Just a little black snake about the size of a pencil. And all hello jello broke loose with the Brown girls. They could not handle that they were walking somewhere where SNAKES COULD BE! The crying and clinging to Dad started then. The fighting because, boy do our girls fight when they are under stress, began.

 

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Little did they know that they hadn’t really encountered what would set them over the edge. I grew up in Maryland and bumble bees there are quite larger. I think all my girls’ have every really seen are wasp sized bees. When they were walking down the wood path through a swamp and HUMONGOUS BUMBLE BEES APPEARED, THEY JUST ABOUT ALL DIED.

I have never laughed that hard in my life. While trying to be kind and explain to them that they were not in fact in a weird JUMANGI game where they entered a killer forest of oversized bees.

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VIDEO PROOF HERE:

Nature from the underneath from Vanessa Brown on Vimeo.

My husband even wrote about it in his weekly newsletter. His words are below…

Okay, I’m trying to think of the best way to tell this. Because this is one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen.

But first, make sure to read down to the bottom of the email. I’m giving away some cool dog training books and courses and some other great stuff is down there, too. Don’t miss it.

As many of you know, I’ve got four daughters. They currently range from 11 down to 4 years of age.

Also, as many of you know, we live in Utah.

It’s a desert here. We hardly see any wild animals where we live. Seeing a squirrel is really a rare thing. Turtles and lizards and possums and such surely live around here. They must.

But we hardly ever see anything.

You can imagine how different things were when we recently went to Georgia for my brother’s wedding. Georgia seemed to be teeming with birds and lizards and all sorts of little mammals running around.

And there we were.

Again, I’m going to try to describe this as well as I possibly can. It’s tough to put in words. But what ensued was the funniest thing I’ve ever witnessed.

As a family we were walking down a path in kind of a swampy area we had found.

We were marveling at the turtles just lounging around in the water.

Depending on where you live you may think that’s not a big deal. But we’re from Utah. We don’t have little swampy areas. We don’t see turtles anywhere but the pet store.

So we took pictures and counted how many turtles we could find and thought it was pretty darn neat.

And then we continued down the path when we suddenly saw a snake.

This one was a baby.

Maybe four inches long and thinner than a pencil. Just a tiny little snake.

But…

My. Kids. Lost. It.

In unison all four of them started screaming and running away in the opposite direction.

On their faces was pure, unadulterated, full sugar, no disguises FEAR.

They’d never seen a snake in Utah. And they were legitimately terrified.

Only, here’s the problem.

The ran straight into a bee.

Not a regular bee. Well…regular by our standards.

You see, in Utah we’ll see little bumblebees and wasps. They’re small, not much bigger than a fly.

But, in Georgia, they have these bees that are like the size of a golf ball.

And when they ran into that buzzing, floating golf ball their screaming, somehow, got louder and back they came.

Well, by this time the snake was gone but now a different bumblebee was where the snake had been.

And thus ensued a scene that was one part cartoon, one part chainsaw massacre movie, and 12 parts future therapy as these poor girls, who had never seen such snakes and bees in Utah, ping ponged back and forth with the most terrifying shrieking that you’ve heard since the Toledo Banshee convention of 1989.

My wife and I sat back and laughed at the scene, callous parents that we are.

And while it was funny to see my kids run back and forth in terror of harmless bits of the natural world I was reminded of a not-so-funny-scene.

I’m talking about our poor dogs who also have irrational fears of things in their world that are mostly harmless.

You see, through improper/lacking socialization and improper/lacking training it’s very easy to have a dog who is TERRIFIED of things in it’s world.

But here’s the problem. My kids were afraid of a silly bee and they’re little kids. Ultimately their fear didn’t lead to any real danger.

But your dog is carrying around literal knives inside his mouth (sharp teeth) along with the real ability to use them.

Silly fear with little girls leads to shrieking.

Silly fear with dogs can lead to much worse.

You want to avoid that?

Proper training and socialization is the way to go. Look at the links below for how we can help you with that.

Ty Brown

This is what we will always remember about Hilton Head in our family!

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