"I was almost swallowed by the earth...."

True story. Earlier this evening, I avoided falling into a sinkhole by literally one second. On my breaks at work, I go walking. There are a lot of hills in the neighborhood and one particular alleyway runs up a very steep hill. I was coming down this alley for about the hundredth time this year when I heard a rumbling behind me, not terribly loud but sounding like something very large falling. I spun around to see most of the ground where I'd just stepped a moment ago collapse and go sliding sideways, under the fence into someone's backyard. They'd done some work in their yard recently and apparently had tried to level it out by removing all of the dirt along the fence between their yard and the alley. Obviously, they didn't think to install a retaining wall or anything because recent heavy rains have apparently washed out the dirt under the alley and now they have a huge slab of asphalt in their backyard. Sometimes I wonder if this subterranean thing isn't going to get the better of me?