The classic rule of carpentry is to measure twice cut once. The reason this is so important it’s because you can always make the board shorter but it’s way harder to make the board longer. You don’t want to waste the lumber, but at the end of the day, it’s not the worst mistake in the world.
Some mistakes are much easier to fix than others. Sometimes the cost of being wrong it can be disastrous.
So when a friend of mine found a small snake, he gave it to me, and I took it home to show my kids. I looked it up on the internet, and found pictures of a small grey snake. They looked very close to the snake I had in my container, and the internet said it was a harmless rat snake. My kids were delighted, and wanted to keep it as a pet.
However, when it comes to snakes I’m a little suspicious – so I searched and searched again until I found an exact match. This time it was clear – this wasn’t a rat snake, it was an Oriental Wolfsnake. Not too dangerous, but poisonous, and unfriendly.
This is your tail-end risk.
If something goes wrong with a poisonous snake, the potential consequences are unthinkable.
As we go through life, considering the outlier of the mostly unlikely, but potentially disastrous consequences is important for businesses, organizations, family finances, health decisions, and snakes. Most days, nothing goes wrong. However, are you prepared if something goes extremely wrong? Have you considered the potential consequences? Usually a small amount of prevention / verification / insurance can save you from catastrophe.
They say that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, but sometimes an ounce of prevention is invaluable because there is no cure.
So check the snake twice.
For a really good article on this topic (albeit a little depressing) look at Morgan Housel’s article on risk here.
(For those who are concerned about the well-being of the snake, it was released safely in an unpopulated area.)