Snake!
"Rachael, go into this dip fast so you can carry your momentum through to the uphill on the other side! Push it! Faster! That a girl! I'm right behind you!"BBBZZZZTTTT!
"Hey, Dad! How did you get up there? And when did you learn to FLY!?"
"That buzz you just heard was a snake and I'm not coming down until I find out where it is!"
Ah, yes. The western diamondback. As in snake. As in rattlesnake. With fangs. Growing up out on the plains of eastern Colorado, you learn early on that when you hear that distinctive buzz, you jump into the air and you don't come down until you find out where the snake is. Even if it means flying for weeks at a time. Whole towns have been known to walk around 6 feet in air and not because they are overly happy! And if you did happen to find out where it was there was only one response - kill it!
My mom only had one super power and that was her ability to kill rattlesnakes - large or small. In Fowler, where I grew up, they call her the Terror. She would be walking down the road, just an innocent looking Annt Bee type of lady carrying a small hand bag and wearing one of those silly pill box hats. She'd hear that buzz and out would come a full-sized, razor-sharp shovel and the snake's head would be separated from its shoulders - so to speak - faster than a French King's! And then she would leave the snake where it lay as a warning to all the other rattlesnakes of the world. Very effective!
Now I can jump into the sky and never come down when I'm around a rattlesnake, much to the amazement of all my friends and acquaintances. It's even more impressive when I have a bike attached to my feet and I just hanging around still on the bike. I've never shared my mother's blood lust when it comes killing rattler's since I figure that I'm invading its home and it's just doing snaky things. But being a guy, I have the typical guy response to anything that is dangerous - I get a stick and I poke it! Or throw rocks at it.
I got a stick and standing there like the moron that I am with my daughter on the banks of the Purgatory River poking a poisonous snake with a stick - a poisonous snake that is already mad because I almost ran over it, I thought this is really dumb when "BBBZZZZTTTT!" and we're both standing 6 feet off the ground. That's when I realized we had just the answer - we need a longer stick!