The Muscle I Didn't Know I Was Building

I started volunteering at Liberty Wildlife because I was afraid of birds. Not a mild discomfort, a real fear, the kind I'll happily blame on Alfred Hitchcock and nobody else. Nine years later, that fear is gone, and somewhere along the way it took my fear of reptiles, insects, and arachnids down with it. I've told that story before. What I didn't realize until recently is that facing that fear did something else entirely, something that had nothing to do with birds at all.