Animal encounters

Tell us about your animal encounters...

A while back I was hiking down a trail and turned a corner to see a rattlesnake sunning itself in the trail. I stood there a minute, it looked at me I at him, it was almost another mile to go around, and finally I said "I don't suppose you'd let me step over you and be on my way..?" The snake responded with a lazy shake-shake, is if it was answering "uh-uh" So I turned around and went the long way.

So I'm hiking down another trail, one I'd been down only a few days earlier, and this bug comes up and smacks me upside the head and starts buzzing around me. I'm thinking horsefly, so I swat at it, only to find a very angry bee pushing on the earpiece of my glasses like he was trying to push me over. I stopped, he backed off, and I watched for a minute. Over head I see a bee fly by, then another, then another, all on the same line. I follow the line to a hole in a rock on the side of the trail, they had set up a hive inside the hole and there were bees coming and going regularly. So again, I had to go the long way. But it was nice to get a heads up from one before I got too close.

I live in Ohio so we don't have too many really spectacular animals you can run into lol but one day, I was walking back to my apartment and there was this HUGE raccoon in the vented sewer I was standing on top of. It was just sitting there looking at me and then it took off down one of the tunnels. It was really weird because I did not know Raccoon could get that big! Plus that's the closest I've ever been to one.

My uncle had 2 babies raccoons, funny little creatures...but they like to vandalize your home at night! lol Every morning it looked like a disaster hit!..

One day a frog jumped into my hair and got tangled.

Global warming is driving them north

My wife's cousin had a pet raccoon! It was just a baby, they found it by a road kill, and it was an interesting pet. Very inquisitive, very smart at figuring things out. But once it was fully adult they released it back into the wild, after acclimating it to that environment.

Didja kiss it? Mighta been your prince

Oh my goodness, am I ever excited!! You are speaking my language! Animals!!! Lol!!!

My craziest story is I was out in the middle of the bush up in Northern Canada on a property I just purchased by a National Park. I was doing a 'soil/water absorption testing' that would take all day. Had my back-pack with lunch, two huge 40 gallon water jugs, wallet, and books.
Hours passed and I was reading when I heard a huge crack behind me. There was an enormous ginger brown bear about twenty feet from me stretched out clawing a tree! It started tromping towards me; I just stared at the bear and instantly fell in love!! Lol!! Literally was the most gorgeous bear I had ever seen; and for some reason wasn't afraid. Since I'm an avid hiker; I knew not to run or scream. I just calmly talked to 'him/her' as it came closer and closer to about ten feet. I started to walk backwards, then realized I didn't have my keys!! Lol!! So I dashed back to my supplies and snatched my keys; I can still smell the scent of the bear. (Still I honestly was not afraid? Maybe in shock??) Asked the bear to stay there; so I could grab my camera from my vehicle about three kms away to take a photo, from a safe distance of course.

When I returned the bear was gone; but it pulled out all my books and layed them out in a row!? (As if pondering the titles!) Punctured huge holes in the water jugs, didn't touch any of my food, and nibbled my wallet- which I still have to this day

I saw a mountain HUGE mountain lion jump in front of my car, and if I didn't hit the brakes I could have easily hit the thing...

I have seen rattlesnakes warming up on rocks as well, they are really cool.

I have seen plenty of bald eagles and hawks... (Even shot a hawk when I was a child, which made me cry)

I have seen heards of elk of over 100... I remember that hunting with my cousin and father... Very cool day...

I have seen deer battle...

But by far, the coolest story I have heard is my father saw a black Jaguar/panther in Hesprus Colorado. He went to the game and fish and told them where he saw it and they said that there is around 3 stories a year from that exact place... So game and fish believes that there is a jaguar/panther in Colorado...

There are so many deer in the highlands here. I saw more on one trip in the mountains (by car) than I've seen in all my life in Norway.

I've also seen foxes a couple of times , and hordes of hares. And a few birds of prey, mostly too far off to identify properly.

and I once saw a really odd looking bird, that came really close to us. I will post a picture when I'm at my own computer.

I've been close enough to a hawk that I could have probably reached out and touched it in my backyard, it just sat there. Umm I've been within feet of monkeys at a beach lol and also meerkats at a park. One time we had a giraffe stick its head in our car on this drive-thru safari thing lol.

When I was little one summer, we had this bird that would "sing" to my mom like every evening and she would whistle back, which was pretty cool. We also went to a petting zoo once and I was chased by an emu. I've hated birds ever since. -_-

But the most recent encounter was last year when I caught this little guy with a slice of pizza :S haha

When I was a kid I pet a dolphin once when I was in the Bahamas. I was scared he was going to bite my legs or something. Like with all animals though, you get close and you can get a sense of their strength. That dolphin tho, he could have used his head to take my legs straight out from under me...



Master splinter...gnarly looking marmot

Saturday morning in deer camp a squirrel came up and tried to tell me to share my Clif bar with him.

He was real close and had no fear whatsoever.

I tried to tell him to get a job and get his own Clif bar.

I think, in the end, we both understood each other.

I called it my deer camp but it was really his area. I heard him walking around at night and early morning picking up pine cones and stuff. At first, I was alarmed by the weird noises but I started getting accustomed to what was making the noise by the second night.

My husband and I were camping up in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. We were standing around the campfire and a skunk came out of the woods and walked right between my husband's feet. I literally jumped backwards onto the picnic table on our site. I could hardly believe how close that thing came to us with no fear. After we went to bed in our tent I realized I had forgotten to take our bag of chicken bones to the dumpster on the other side of the campsite. We could hear the skunk crunching on those all night. I was afraid it we made any noise it might spray our tent.

Hahaha! No, I didn't find his first impression all that charming. So no kiss for him.

My family and I were camping. We had set up a tent, started a fire, and eaten supper. Then we put everything edible into the van so the critters couldn't get at it.

Then we went to bed, (or bag, as the case may be). the only things we left out were a water cooler with a screw-on lid and a zipped up duffle bag with towels in it.

We had seen signs of coons and the little buggers themselves before we went to sleep, and in the middle of the night we heard the person in the next campsite throwing things and crashing around and shouting, "Scat! Shoo!" We knew the coons had gotten at them.

It was a busy night for the animals, because before morning they had made a raid on our camp ground. When we came out of the tent in the morning it was to find the duffle carefully opened, (not torn, mind, but opened with the zipper), the animals had found a bag of vitamins and had unscrewed the lid on the water cooler, carefully washed them therein, and arranged them on a washcloth that they had spread out for that purpose. They had tasted a few, and found them not to their liking, except for a bag of children's vitamins, which we never found again.

As we drove from the campground, we saw the what the coons had done to other campers in the form of scattered garbage that they had left out and were now picking up.

Here's the bird I was talking about