Brush With Nature: tell us about your run-ins with creatures from the great outdoors.

[applegrove]

Me, I was playing sardines up at the cottage in 1979. I jumped behind a bush to hide and immediately felt burrs. I said to my cousin "I just sat on a burr bush. I stopped moving and the 'burrs' kept stinging. "Bees - I'm being stung by bees". I ran, bounding over logs and through the forest like a gazelle, to my cousins cottage. I yanked off my sweater and my aunt brushed those little suckers off me (they were wasps). All in all I got stung about a dozen times. I was a little bit allergic but took some medicine and was okay. But I've always been terrified of the little suckers since.

[bigwillq]

1. I hit (and killed, sadly) a deer with my car.

Does that count? Had to get a new car. I think I cried more for the deer, though.

[A HERETIC I AM]

16. I almost hit one the other night.

Missed him by ---><--- this much...seriously.
I was driving my car hauler up through Missouri toward St. Louis and there she (? - looked like a Doe, anyway) standing RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE LANE! I'm cruising along and see her. She's facing to my left and I start looking for somewhere to go. The road had a pretty narrow shoulder and going to the left meant that if she started moving forward, I'd plow right into her. Luckily she started moving when I was about a truck length away but she missed my left front bumper by inches. As close as I've come to hitting one in a long time.

[femmocrat]

2. We had a deer jump through our pool a few years ago.

Fortunately I didn't see it! He(?) jumped over the safety fence, bounced off the float that was under the cover, and cleared the fence on the other side. We knew it was a deer by the footprints. He managed to sink most of the cover, but at least we didn't have to rescue a swimming deer!

We have deer bounding through our property occasionally. They are so beautiful, but up close they frighten me.

[mainstreetonce]

7. A deer ran through school

When my son was in Kdg a deer ran right through a glass door all the way through the halls and out a rear door. Fortunately no one was hurt.

[alarimer]

3. Because of my job, I encounter animals all the time.

I've been bitten by alligator gar, pinched by blue crabs and stung by jellyfish.

But I have also had amazing encounters with dolphins, sea turtles and birds.

And I once hit a feral pig with my car. The car survived the encounter; the pig, not so much.

[applegrove]

4. Lucky you to be working in the wilds. My parents just sold their cottage and I miss it so.

[MrScorpio]

5. I was driving back from Lux City to Bitburg

There was a four us cars in a tight row.

A couple of deer jumped out in front of the first car… I was last one, BTW .

We all came to a screeched halt and thankfully, none of us hit anything.

If any of us were closer to each other than we were we all would have been fucked.

[mainstreetonce]

6. A duck

A duck lived in my living room fireplace chimeny for over a week. No one would believe I was really hearing quacking. We got it out alive, a quick trip to a vet for IV fluids and it was back in the lake.
A possum made a home in the garage. It knocked on the kitchen door when it smelled chocolate chips cookies.

[Avalux]

8. Scorpions. In my house.

I absolutely hate the things, they give me shivers. I came home one night and my dog was freaking out, running around in a circle in the middle of the living room. It was dark out and had to turn on a bright light to see what all the fuss was about. When I did, there was a scorpion - my dog was running around it - the thing was pissed and with it's tail in the air, moved around as if to escape. I had a thick 2 inch phone book on the counter, grabbed it and dropped it on the thing.

Thinking it was dead, I left the phone book where it was and went to bed. When I got up in the morning and picked up the phone book, the scorpion was still alive and REALLY pissed. I screamed and screamed and screamed, horrified it was still alive, then grabbed a shoe and beat the crap out of it until it was dead.

[Throckmorton]

9. I was assulted by a Sporkweasel once

He or she came at me with a ginsu knife, so I dropped my hot dog and ran for the car.

That will teach me to picnic in the tough side of the forest.

[krispos42]

10. I came across a herd of pronghorn antelope once

I was hiking the Black Hills in Custer State Park with my then-wife and her brother. We hiked a few miles inland, then turned around and came back out.

On the way back out the path opened up onto a... small meadow, I guess you would call it, bordered by palisades maybe 20 or 30 feet high.


So there is an entire herd of pronghorn antelope in the meadow. Like over a hundred.

We all come to a sudden and abrupt stop and just stare. I was afraid to even go for the camera on my hip.


The moment held for maybe 30 seconds, maybe a minute. Then one of them got spooked and *poof* they scattered and vanished in the space of about 3 seconds.



It was pretty cool!

[sparklebunny]

12. When I was a kid

we lived in a somewhat rural area that kept getting developed and forcing the wildlife closer and closer to humans. One day I was walking out of the house, filled with adolescent angst and rage about probably not too much, and I stopped grumping long enough to look up into the eyes of a deer maybe 10 feet away.

I don't know how long we stared at each other but something finally startled her and she darted off. I stood, stock still, for what seemed like an eternity, just wondering at how cool that was. Never knew before that deer could cure an angst. :)

[marzipanni]

54. I grew up 12 miles west of Boston

Deer lived in the woods that covered the hills beyond the old apple orchards and cleared old farm fields around our house. At the end of the summer the little ponds in the woods were drying up and the deer would wander down closer to the road and the pond near my family's house, in search of water. Early in the morning we'd see them sometimes walking slowly through the mist-shrouded field of long grass. Every few years a fox family would appear, cottontail rabbits, woodchucks, and now coyotes also live in the area which has fewer fields and meadows and more small plots of woodlands than 20-40 years ago.
Spring peepers, their chorus sounding like sleigh bells, would sing us to sleep each April.

listen here-http://www.wodfriends.org/pseudacris_crucifer_chorus.mp3


Welcome to DU!

[seabeyond]

11. camping in a park in the mountains of new mexico we were told to put a blanket over ice chest

cause the bears would get it.

really, we thought they were joking. made no sense. we laughed.

sleeping, we were woken by something messing with our tent. hubby had his handgun. (i am anti gun and know nothing about them). i asked him if that gun would take care of a bear, really teasing and assuming it would. he told me no, just piss it off. then why not have a better gun, i asked. for people not bear.

i am not afraid of people, i am of bears.

we woke the next morning and the bear had figured out how to open ice chest and drank all of hubbys coke and ate the left over fish he had caught.

went home and that night there was a show on the history channel about all the bear attacks across the nation, and in that very park.

havent camped since. i need a hotel with a shower.

[bluesbassman]

13. My buddy was caretaking a ranch about halfway between Carmel

and Greenfield way out off of Cachagua road, and one weekend his brother and I went out to visit. You could only get to the place by horse or fourwheel drive and on this day we were in the latter. About halfway in we were on a trail that traversed a steep hill that was covered with manzanita and scrub oak. At one point we were on a particularly narrow stretch, with a fifteen foot sheer cliff on our left and we were just crawling along when a bobcat leaped off the cliff and on to the hood of the Jeep. He stayed there for about two seconds, just staring at us through the windshield, then bounded off the hood and down the other side of the hill disappearing into the brush. After the initial shock, we just sat there for a few minutes in amazement before heading on down the trail.

Looked pretty much like this guy standing on the hood. :)

[csziggy]

14. Walked out my back door and was almost knocked down by a turkey

At the time, we had a small stoop with a set of stairs and no railings. There was flock of turkeys in the back yard. When I opened the door, I spooked the flock, but the tom was on one side of the steps and the rest of the turkeys on the other. They all took off (yes, turkeys CAN fly!), including the tom who flew close enough his wing tip brushed my face.

The other day I walked out on the front porch. One of our does was standing in front of the big live oak tree, about thirty feet away. She just stared at me, even when I waved my hands at her and tried to spook her. When I slammed the front door, she got tense but what spooked her was the other deer that had been hiding in the low branches of the oak tree. When it heard the door slam, it spooked and ran, making a lot of noise. That finally spooked the first doe, when panicked and ran the other direction.

[RSillsbee]

15. I live in Colorado

and a few years back it seemed like I couldn't go into the woods w/ out running into a bear. The closest I ever got was 20 feet. Walked around a bend in the trail and there it was.

I see eagles at least once a day and deer are like antlered rats around here

ETA

I never let my dogs out alone because of the coyotes

[blogslut]

17. For three glorious years I lived in a canyon

There were the deer who showed up every morning to nose around the dumpsters. The road out of my village was a winding, twisty thing and one never dared speed on it for fear of hitting the deer who had a nasty habit of traipsing the road at those times of dawn/dusk when they were barely visible.

There were quail and, again when driving home or out, I had to watch for mother quails and the adorable rows of tiny chicks that followed behind in a perfect line across the road.

Morning again, if I woke up early enough, I would catch a glimpse of the local roadrunner as he made his rounds, poking his head in the glass doors of my complex.

My first year, a tarantula got into my apartment and to my shame, I freaked and tried to kill it. I hit it with a broom and broke off part of one of its legs. I came to my senses, scooped it up and tossed it outside. I encountered that same tarantula several times after and always expressed my profound regrets.

Scorpions got no respect from me. I remember watching my little white cat playing with a bug. Then I saw that unlike normal bugs, this one was crawling up her body. I batted the scorpion off my kitty and smashed that bastard good. Any scorpion I saw in the apartment died. I had a child. Fuck scorpions.

I also had a Maine Coon cat. He was huge and his markings were not unlike those of a raccoon. There were several late nights when the local raccoon would walk by my sliding glass door and stop to play mirror image with my Maine Coon. They would face each other, my cat growling as they stared each other down.

I miss that place so much.

[Ineeda]

18. I had recently moved from Boston to suburban, coastal Florida...

Strolling past my live oak toward the mailbox one summer afternoon several years back, I thought the cicadas were particularly loud. I glanced down and an eastern diamondback was no more than 18 inches away, coiled and rattling. Because we have dogs and kids nearby, I didn't want it to get away, didn't want to lose sight of it, but I was really spooked. I was used to seeing an occasional harmless black snake, but this was my first (and only) rattler. I ran next door to a neighbor and asked her to call animal control. She did, and then joined me. For the 45 minutes we waited for rescue, she and I corralled it on my lawn, staying a safe distance away, of course. We were armed with brooms and adrenalin.

[CBGLuthier]

19. One Time, I scooped up a Possum with a shovel.

Ever hear the expression, "Playing Possum?"

Well he had, and he was, and he jumped off that shovel and I jumped even more.

Not really an outdoors type.

[wysimdnwyg]

20. Went "hiking" with my family when I was a kid

OK, not real hiking, more "trail walking", but we went down to the bottom of a small canyon. On the way back up, it was starting to get dark in the canyon. As we're walking, my father was in front, with me just behind. He stepped on what he thought was a stick. It happened quickly enough that I stepped on it as well. Only when I stepped on it, I slipped a little and the "stick" went sliding down the hill to the trail about 10-15 feet below us. By the time it got down there, I could see it moving on it's own and could hear its rattle shaking. Yep, my father and I both had just stepped on a rattlesnake.

[Rambis]

21. Black bear dumpster 4:00am

Come out of the bathroom and there is a bear about to jump into the dumpster. Female biker comes out of the other side and yells at the bear as the tries to slap him, bear turns toward me. I take off and all I can hear are my footsteps and the sound of four pads hitting the pavement behind me. I took a hard right he went left crashed through tent ropes collapsing two or three tents before taking off.

[JohnnyLib2]

22. I'm about to act out "Caddyshack"

raccoons and possums have returned to the deck .....

[applegrove]

57. We teased my father he was Bill Murray in Caddyshack when he started

a war with misquitoes because he was afraid of West Nile virus. He actually poured a bottle of cooking oil into the local swamp to try and kill them.

[annonymous]

23. I almost hit a mama bear and her cub in the Smokies

They were lying down in the middle of this one lane mountain road. It gave all of us a big scare. I honked my horn and they moved.

[XemaSab]

24. This past weekend

I saw about 160 species of bird, as well as bear, white-tailed deer, mule deer, elk, pronghorn, fisher, coyote, jackrabbit, muskrat, rattlesnake, and some other snake that I couldn't ID.

I was looking at a prairie falcon nest on this cliff and my friend said, "The blackbirds are pecking something over there." Lo and behold, there was a large bird lying on the ground being attacked by blackbirds. I went over to it and at first I thought it was a dead young falcon, but then I saw it breathing. I went and got my jacket and picked up the bird and we took it to the ranger headquarters. As of yesterday, it was doing okay. :)

[Iggo]

25. Camping on the beach, Catalina Island, early 1970's.

Late at night, an animal walked around our tent 3 or 4 times. We could only hear sharp exhaling.

Next day one of the adults (we were sleeping in the kids tent of course) told us it was probably a bobcat. We also found some days-old mountain goat carcasses between the rocks farther down the beach, but I don't remember now if it was on that same trip or a different one.

But anyway, if it was indeed a bobcat, that's as close as I think I've ever been to a predator in the wild who was considering eating me. About two feet, and nothing but canvas between us.

Yoiks!

[madmom]

26. Since my family was big into camping and hiking, there are quite a few, the

most memorable ones were, when we were hiking the Appalachian Trail (No we really where there not in South America)I was walking in front of hubby and son. I had the camera around my neck, when two young deer came across the trail. They watched me and I actually had an apple in my hand, they came up and where eating out of my hand. Only problem was camera was out of film (older 35 mm) and the rest of my film was with hubby.
Another time we were in Sedona Az. hiking up to Bell Rock on the trail.Coming back down, we went around a curve in the trail and was hit by a very strong smell of cat urine.So we just became very vigilant. The next day I was reading the local paper and there was an article about a rabid mountain lion shot not far from where we were, just scary.:scared:

[hifiguy]

27. Heard some noise outside

the double-bungalow I was living in - and this was in a totally developed area of Minneapolis - and went out to look. I'd had trouble with getting garbage cans dumped over and making a mess. As I'd seen a number of dogs in the neighborhood, I figured it was a result of irresponsible dawg owners.

I look down the stairs to where the cans are and there are two raccoons, one of which gives me the NYC "whuddya gonna do about it, chump?" look and goes back to work on the garbage can.

Went out and bought garbage can with a locking lid the next day. The raccoons moved off in search of easier pickings, apparently.

[geardaddy]

29. I see 'em regularly in garbage cans in Uptown.

Our little pug/chihuahua goes nuts when she sees 'em climbing trees.

[geardaddy]

28. Saw a moose cow expertly dodging through white pines

in the BWCA.

Saw another in a marsh chewing marsh plants.

[Arkansas Granny]

30. I grew up in the country and have done a lot of camping as an adult.

I've seen lots of critters up close and personal. The one that sticks with me the most is the fox that came walking around the edge of the campsite one night when I was sitting by the fire alone. I caught movement out of the corner of my eye and when I looked up, he was sitting just at the edge of the campsite watching me. We stared at each other for a while, then he got up and went on his way. He was beautiful.

Another neat experience was watching the beavers early one morning while I was having my coffee down by the creek. The sun hadn't appeared yet from behind the hills and there was mist on the water, birds were singing and it was very peaceful. There was a large beaver and a young one on the opposite bank swimming around, and I was so intent on them that I didn't notice the one that was swimming along the bank toward me. When he noticed me he slapped his tail so hard that it sounded like a body falling in the water. I jumped so far that I threw hot coffee all over the place.

Now I live in town, but I still have possums, skunks and armadillos that frequent my yard.

[charlie and algernon]

31. Watched a blue heron steal a fish out of the mouth of a snake

I was walking along the C&O Canal in Maryland and stopped at one of the Lockes to take a break and ended up watching this heron try to fish in a stream feeding into the canal. I was probably only 10-15 feet away, just watching as it stalked fish, not having much luck. Well, luck came to it as this decent sized black snake came out of the water, with a fish in its mouth, right behind the heron. The heron walks over to the snake, sees the fish, stares for a little and walks back to his fishing spot. Well he must not have seen any fish because he suddenly goes back to the snake and in a second, swipes the fish out of the snakes mouth and walks into the woods with it. The snake just sat there for a little, probably in shock, before slithering back into the water.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

32. Screech owl came down the chimney,

found him sitting on an andiron in the fireplace. He was captured with a fishing net and turned loose. Raccoons on the bird feeder and lurking on my back porch, stealing bird seed. Saw a possum in the back yard not too long ago. And there was a duck swimming in my bird bath.

[libodem]

33. Heard my kitty growling on the patio

A racoon was eating her cat food. Creature just took a good look at me and saundered out the back gate.

[nadine_mn]

34. bears

I grew up in Northern Minnesota and it is fairly common for bears to come to town and dump our garbage cans (hooligans) esp if its been a bad berry season.

One day I was out taking the little ankle biter out for a potty break when I heard her bark and rounded the corner and saw 2 black bear cubs in our yard. I scooped her up and hustled back inside, because where there are baby bears, there is a Momma bear ready to kick your ass.

I have probably been within 30 ft of a black bear at least 5 times thanks to my semi-wilderness upbringing. Not to mention (like a previous poster) heading out to the city dump to watch the bears.

[applegrove]

35. I took my kitten Sam up to the cottage. One of the first things she did there

was come upon a family of raccoons eating her food. She chased them all down the stairs of the deck and up a tree. The mama raccoon, who was 10 times Sam's size, got about a foot up the tree, looked back at the tiny thing that was chasing it and stopped. Sam was so proud.

We also had a porcupine that used to chew on the wood of the stilt like support beam under one corner of the cottage. If they had bit through that the cottage would have fallen. I was up there by myself and kept shooing the tiny little porcupine away as I tried to sleep right over the stilt. I'd just get to sleep and then all of a sudden I'd be woken up by the gnawing. Was one long night.

[panader0]

36. I have had many

I've done a lot of hiking and camping, but the one encounter that sticks out the most was a time when I was hiking in a canyon of the Catalina Mts and scared up a mountain lion. I must have gotten too close to her lair, perhaps she had a cub to protect. I stood there, in awe for a moment before I realized I was in a very teneble situation. She was crouched on a boulder above me about 25 feet away. I took several steps backwards, then turned and walked slowly away. only later did I realize I could have had a hell of a fight on my hands.

[WinkyDink]

37. I feed "my" chipmunks, squirrels, and sparrows daily at my garage door. I love them!

[Inchworm]

38. A snake stole our fishing bait the other night

We were down a bank in the dark. The snake casually came 3-4 feet from us and took the cut up "baitfish" we were using for catfish. My bud swears it was a water moccasin.. I have my doubts.

I'm thinking it was some other sort of water snake, but who knows. It came, snagged some food then left.



:hi:

[annabanana]

39. A moray eel once "protected" an area of rock from me as I

scuba'd by. It was clear from it's posture that it just plain didn't want me near that rock.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

40. coyote crossed my path yesterday evening --

deer ate some of my flowers the day before that.

caught a blacksnake being chased by a bird couple of weeks ago.

mother wren had 5 babies in my flower pot on my front porch this spring.

you mean like that?

[Inchworm]

41. hehe

I thought something similar, so I just picked a good story that happened, of late, that I could put a picture with ;)

:hi::*

[Tuesday Afternoon]

46. yeah . . .

the tales/tails we could tell :D

good to see you :hug:

[Inchworm]

48. Good to see you too!

I thought about you the other day. I've been watching a series on Netflix about horseys.

Heartland is the name of it. It has some "teen angst" type stuff, but the storyline is pretty cool.

:hug:

[applegrove]

45. I just like stories, people's stories.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

47. want to hear about the copperhead that got away?

:D

it was a baby and I am still wondering where the mother was. That was the same day we caught the black snake.

:hi:

[Brickbat]

42. I live in the woods. Bear, foxes, coyotes and wolves pass through regularly. This place is crawling

with deer and I'm ready to start hunting to help control them. Plus, YUM!

[Kali]

43. you mean in the last half hour or do you want me to crash this site?

:rofl:

[applegrove]

44. I had a grandmother who told stories about being a country doctor's wife. I love hearing people's

stories. Why I post these questions.

[Kali]

49. I think as I replied there were small ants crawling on my feet

there isn't much barrier between the outdoors and the inside of my house. Plus I am out there all the time too so I see stuff most every day (or deal with it in here!:rofl: )

I have posted these before, but if you haven't seen them you might get a kick from them. One year the skunks got really aggressive and invasive.









here is a little incident from last summer:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=105&topic_id=9428335

[applegrove]

50. Oh my god I would have died!!!

[pscot]

51. Rabbits eat my veggies

deer eat my fruit trees and ants ate a corner of my house. I spent yesterday tearing out a wall and I expect there's more damage I haven't found.

[Throd]

52. I saw an absolutely HUGE mola mola (sunfish) basking a few miles off Bodega bay.

Tha damn thing looked to the size of a Volkswagen Beetle. It bumped into the side of the boat and just slid underneath.

More on mola molas http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mola_mola

[jmowreader]

61. Good god...

"Average adult weight of 1000 kg (2200 lb.)"

Weight of aircooled Volkswagen Beetle: 1764 lbs.

Weight of watercooled Volkswagen Beetle: 2712 lbs.

[laundry_queen]

53. I've never come face to face with anything

but I lived in northern Alberta and BC for awhile. Often while driving on the highway, you'd see bears or moose or caribou or cougars. Our house backed onto the forest and our neighbours had stories of leaping over the fence (the garden was on the other side for some reason) when a bear would wander into the area (probably freaked out at stumbling upon houses). I never saw any though.

One year we had really really deep snow and all the moose were starving. They all decided to come into town to look for food. You could hardly turn around without seeing one. Our house (different house) backed onto a field and we could watch them cross the field into town from our living room window. One night I put my puppy outside to do his business. He barked at something so I called him in. I sat down on my chair and looked out my living room window and saw a moose head bobbing by my window - I swear he looked right at me - then he sharply veered out to the field. Minutes sooner and he'd have trampled my pup. Later that week I was stopped at a stop sign on my way home and a moose went trotting by right infront of me - as all the kids were walking home from school! That was a bit scary, as my kids were also walking home about a block away.

We also used to watch foxes and coyotes out our living room window. There was also a deer trail and we'd see them come in the spring and leave in the fall. I have pictures of all of these things but they aren't small enough to upload.

I live in the city now and don't see much wildlife anymore, except for the Canadian geese in all the retention ponds.

[anneboleyn]

55. My brave boy kitteh went all puffy and growled -- a raccoon tried to come through the cat door

Now my kitteh has passed away, but he considered himself very brave in the old days. (The cat door was no more after my kitty was hit by a car and had to have extensive surgery to save his life).

[LibDemAlways]

56. I was waiting for a repairman and went out the front door onto the

walkway leading up to my So. Cal. suburban home. What I thought was a cat nudged my leg. I paid no attention until it happened again. I looked down and jumped about three feet when I realized it was a possum.

Another time my then 5-year-old daughter ran into the house to inform me that a bird had flown into the garage. I went out to take a look and realized it was a very large hawk. It was having lunch up in the rafters and leaving some sort of animal drippings on my parked car. When it saw me, It decided to get the hell out of there but just sort of frantically flew around until it literally bounced off the wall, did a 180 and finally made its exit.

The same garage once was temporary shelter for a rattlesnake, spotted just in time by my daughter who alerted her dad that he was about to step on it.

Also, a couple of bears have turned up in local back yards, but thankfully not mine.

[nolabear]

58. A bunch. When I did wildlife rehab we had a sanctuary where deer were kept.

This was generally after some poor fool found a fawn and "rescued" it. Generally we turned them loose but one little guy, "Bucky" (not my fault) we kept because he was stunted and never quite healthy. He was pretty big but not full sized.

One night some fool had the brilliant idea to cut the fence and free him. I was going to feed the livestock and encountered him in the parking lot. Naturally he charged right at me. I managed to grab him by his antlers but then couldn't let go! It was early in the morning (thank goodness; I'd hate for him to have gotten into traffic) and I'll bet we faced off for ten minutes, me screaming at the top of my lungs, before anyone heard me and let my co-workers know. Three of us could manhandle him back around the enclosure and get him back in.

I was really lucky. Deers' antlers arent really their worst weapon; their hooves are. I managed to keep clear by some serious tango dancing! Had he been even a little larger I'd have been toast!

I also once entered an enclosure with nine Bengal and Sumatran tigers. They were all human raised and it was a FOOL thing to do, but it was also the most dead sober I have ever been! LOL!

[backscatter712]

59. A couple weeks ago, saw a family of foxes playing on the patio of someone's house.

Normally, they're pretty skittish animals, but I guess the kits were being rambunctious, and the owners of this house (lives down the street from my mom & dad) have allowed foxes on their property long enough for them to feel safe there. So I saw the mom (still wary) and her kits playing in their patio and yard as I drove past.

Oh, and last week while camping, I saw a bunch of bats at dusk. Pretty cool.

[jmowreader]

60. There are a few

I could tell you stories about the wild boars that kept treeing my troops in Berlin.

We had this one poor guy I let go home early because we had plenty of people for the mission at hand...about two hours later he comes back and told us all about getting run up a tree by what he described as a thousand-pound grunie pig. Anyway, I had my linguists write a story in their target language for language training, and one of them wrote about Troy's turnaround. In it he spoke of a "lang windunge Schlange." So me, whose German is good enough to tell the difference between "Scheinwerfer" (searchlight) and "Schweinwerfer" (pig thrower--you don't wanna know) wanted to know why they were writing about the pig's long curly dick.

Oh...when I was still in North Carolina I heard something up in the attic. I opened the little access panel and poked my head up there...a possum's little red eyes were staring back at me. I left her--I can only assume she built a nest and produced little possums--in there.

[bikebloke]

62. A desert lion and cubs in the Negev Desert.

I was working on a moshav, driving the tractor out to the field when a lion and three cubs crossed the road in front of me. I stopped and watched, until they disappeared in the scrub. An Israeli farmer drove up besides me, saying, "Did you see that!"

[LaurenG]

63. Nothing with a bad ending, I had some good luck with creatures as a kid.

I once found a pile of "earth worms" in the sandbox and brought them all in to show my dad, I had a fistful of them that I wanted him to see. He dumped them out of my hand and onto the floor where he promptly smashed them to death because they were newly hatched rattlesnakes.

Another brush that wasn't dangerous was that I was playing in the backyard with a bird that landed in the yard, I was small enough that the bird was a bit more than waist high to me. I was standing next to it petting its head and talking to it when my mom came rushing out of the house screaming at me to get away from the bird. It was a gentle owl but I suppose my mom thought he would scratch me or something, she scared it away.


I have been really fortunate not to have had bad experiences unless you count mosquito bites or the time a huge flying roach crawled up my pants.

[NV Whino]

64. With a childhood spent in the Colorado mountains

and currently living in the boonies, I've encountered just about everything except moose.

Skunks, possums, raccoons (nasty little buggers), turkeys, pheasants, quail, hawks, eagles, rattlesnakes and various other snakes, chipmunks, squirrels, deer, bobcats, coyotes, foxes, and although I have yet to physically encounter them and only seen their scat, I think I can claim bear and cougars, both of which reside in the area.

[Stuart G]

65. Came within 4 or 5 feet of an elk in the Canadian Rockies..73

If I knew how to scan and post the picture that I took of the elk, I would ..

[GreenPartyVoter]

66. On a hike up in the northern mountains I decided to jump out onto a boulder in a large lake where

we were taking a break. I heard a tremendous crashing of the underbrush behind me and out of the woods came a moose cow and her calf. Unfortunately for me the baby went around the left side of me while mama went right. This put me between the two of them and mama got really upset. Her eyes were rolling back in her head and she was stomping at the water.

Luckily the baby came around behind me and headed to mama, and they took off further down the shoreline. Phew!

[sarge43]

67. Bears

Someday it won't end well.

Summer morning, I'm at the 'puter in the living room, my mother's in the kitchen. I hear "A----! There's a bear at the patio door." Two beats, "OK mom, unless he's a Jehovah Witness, what do you want me to do about it?" (Bear left without much ado.)

Another summer morning, puttering in the veg garden, hear something behind me. Yup, bear about five feet away. OK, sure can't out run him, can't out stare him, so get out my drill sergeant voice and yell "GO AWAY!".
Bear starts, snorts and wanders away. I go and change my underwear.

Summer evening. Bear gets into bee hives. Shortening a long story. Husband labors to put hives back together in cloud of o/a 80K very angry bees, while I throw lawn chairs, water pails, rocks and whatever else I can find at persistent bear. Bear finally leaves, probably figuring these two might do something really crazy and he could get hurt.