The Deadliest State

A common mantra when we are at the Lake Cabin is, "Watch out for snakes." It's not an empty caution; over the years a significant number of copperheads and rattlesnakes have been spotted (and dispatched, when possible).

If you live in Texas, snakes are a common threat. Other regions have their own problems, like sharks, and bears, and alligators. We read news items from time-to-time about the dangers that lurk in our woods or waters, and they seem to get an inordinate amount of attention. There are things out there that can sting us, bite us, eat us or otherwise ruin our day.

I came across a series of articles in the Washington Post a while back that went into some detail about animal-caused deaths, breaking out the statistics from the CDC on such fatalities in the U.S. between 2001 and 2013. On average, and rounded to the nearest whole number, here's how many Americans were killed by various animals each year over that period:

Sharks killed about 1 person per year between 2001 and 2013.

Same for alligators and bears, for that matter.

Sharks, gators and bears combined killed half as many people as snakes (6 deaths per year) and spiders (7 deaths per year).

Non-venomous arthropods - various ants and other terrible non-poisonous bugs - kill 9 people each year.

But this pales in comparison to the deaths caused by nature's silent, stealthy killers - cows. Yep, a CDC report from a few years back found that cows killed about twenty people a year in the mid-2000s. That makes cows about 20 times as lethal as sharks.

Going beyond cattle, dogs about kill 28 people per year, and other miscellaneous mammals, like horses, pigs, deer and the like, kill 52 (none of these numbers include deaths due to vehicle collisions; the CDC figures that the animals are usually not the aggressors in these situations).

But the number 1 animal killers on an annual basis are... bees, wasps and hornets, together responsible for 58 deaths each year - mostly due to anaphylactic shock after a sting.

So, statistically speaking, you're 58 times more likely to be killed by a bee than you are by a shark, or a bear. The article stressed that annual deaths from all animal causes combined (about 200) are just an infinitesimal fraction of total deaths - less than 0.008 percent of all deaths each year. I feel better already.

But wait! There's more. The article also published a series of maps showing the states with the highest rates of mortality by dogs, bees, snakes, spiders and other bugs and mammals. Here's the summary map:

The exact numbers are in another chart, not shown, but it's easy to see the states with the most deaths. California and Texas have a lot of people, so they also have the highest number of animal fatalities - 212 and 356 respectively, since 1999. That's 356 Texans dead at the hands (well, not actually) of some animal or insect.

That seems a disproportionate number since Texas has about 2/3rds as many people as California, but experienced about 150 more animal-related deaths since the late 1990s. This is easily explained by pointing out which state harbors the most silent, stealthy killer cows.

There were more maps that showed how each state fared for the various categories -  dogs, bees, snakes, spiders and other bugs and mammals, etc. -  and they all had one thing in common. Texas lead the nation, or was near the top of every list.

We Texans pay a price to live in the Great State of Texas.