. . . "Spanky's" Ma warns him as MAMA'S LITTLE PIRATE begins. "Mothers don't know anything about caves," the ghost of Spanky's Id retorts moments later. Since MAMA'S LITTLE PIRATE raises an issue still pressing in Today's World, let's examine this question: ARE caves dangerous? A mom and her teenage son who live a few miles from my ancestral home made the national news on March 28, 2018, for getting stuck three hours that week in a malfunctioning Carlsbad Caverns elevator. My brother took me "spelunking" several times into caves with NO elevators (or electric lights). One was halfway down the Grand Canyon, and it had scat from a very large animal on the "floor" of its first large "room." Another was in California's Sequoia\King's Canyon National Park, where we squeezed through what nearly became a one-way crack on a dare from the underground guide ranger (as in, "Sure, you can crawl through that opening, IF you can fit--Tee Hee"). Plus, my brother told us at Thanksgiving about a time he was exploring alone, easing himself face-up through a narrow, almost water-filled rocky tube, and almost drowned when the back of his sweatshirt snagged on something jagged. So take it from Spanky's Ma, the mother at Carlsbad, and me: Caves ARE dangerous--REALLY dangerous!