After the tragic death of the Crocodile Hunter I thought it would be interesting to hear about incidents of animal, insect, marine attacks on SF'ers! Being in the rather tame US Midwest we have few dangerous creatures that would present a regular daily danger but we do have Brown Recluse spiders (very poisonous) bobcats, Timber Rattlesnakes, Copperhead snakes, Water Moccasins (Cottonmouth snakes) dogs and a few other things that will strike but not unless provoked. My only memorable encounters with wildlife injuring me are few and not as exciting as say some of the Aussie stories will be: 1973: Attacked by a dog at age 10. 34 stitches on the right hip and several on the right hand. My most terrifying incident. 1982: Two "Mud Dawber" wasps, attracted by deodorant (I was told) flew into my right armpit. I felt a sting, then another. Felt like a shard of broken glass was placed there and I pressed my arm into my side. Brutally painful. Had to be hospitalized with rapid heartbeat and shallow breathing. I couldn't use deodorant again on that side for a full year. So thrill me SF! Tell me your stories of animal attacks! btw my greatest fear would be to be attacked, stung, bitten underwater.
I provoked a parrot in a garden centre. I mean, it really was my fault. There was a sign that said "Don't tease the parrot" and being about 9, I decided I knew better and would tease the parrot. The bastard took a chunk out my thumb and I needed a butterfly stitch. I still have a 'T' shaped scar on the tip of my right thumb to this day. I wasn't exactly attacked this time, but some kind of frog was using me as a trampoline in Venezuela. I was sharing a room with my sis and I woke up to her laughing her head off. My bed was against the wall and this frog decided to jump from my stomach, bounce off the wall and start again. Again, I wasn't exactly attacked, but I felt fairly vindicated... I left some biscuits on top of a table outside. The next morning, the biscuits were pretty much gone, bar a few crumbs. Two lines of ants, going in different directions, were pretty unlucky. They'd almost finished getting all of the biscuits, but I had a can of deodorant and a lighter handy.
Ohh yeah, parrots can be painful. A friend had his left earlobe torn off by a cockatoo that was pissed off by his incessant babytalk to it. It bled alot more than I could have imagined! Considering Venezuela has poisonous frogs I would scream if I was there and saw one. You were mighty brave.
When I was about 10, there was this house on my way home from school. They had a giant golden retriever (giant by 10 year old standards anyway). Every day it would see me coming and jump up on me. I was small back then, so he knocked me over. Now he kept doing this. I could barely get up before I was on the ground again. The whole time I was just trying to get one or two steps closer to my house before getting knocked down again. And this happened every few days for like two weeks. The owners were almost never around, either (when it was happening, anyway). They had their dog out in the yard (which didn't have a fence), and they weren't even there to make sure it was behaving. Another time I was on a backpacking trip. We stopped for a rest, and all of a sudden it felt like I got pinched with a red-hot pair of tweezers. It must have been some kind of insect. I looked down and there was this huge welt on my arm that was bleeding. I jumped off of the log I was sitting on, and nearly tumbled down the rocky hill into the river. And then on another hiking trip I found myself face to face with a full-grown black bear, but luckily it ran off scared. Other than that, I have been lucky enough to avoid any attacks.
Uhhh, your bear beats all of my wild encounters! The dog story though I can relate to. I was also 10 when a dog (bear size in my mind at the time) rocketed toward me as I rode my bicycle down a residential street. I crashed to the pavement and he set his teeth in and was pulling on me, like we were off to be eaten like a Happy Meal. Dogs are likely the greatest threat to people in most developed countries.
Yeah, the black bear was scary as hell. I turned around a bend in the trail, and she was right there, not 10 feet away, just staring at me. Before I could panic, she just ran off up the mountain. But I could hear it above the trail, following me for about a quarter mile.
I would literally shit my pants. As big as bears are they can easily outrun any human and they can climb AND swim. They can even break into cars. Where were you when this happened?
When i was a kid there was a big dog that would chase me and my friends as we rode past this guys house, we were able to get away but this dog was nasty. One day we rode past and he comes charging out full speed growling and barking, in the oppisite direction a huge tow truck was passing by with a steel plate in front (like Mad Max, i swear) and it was a head on collision...doggie died insantly. I kind of felt bad for the dog but not the owner who should have known better.
It's FREAKY being pursued by a dog on a bike! Utterly mortifying. I hate to see dogs hit though. The owner is who deserved that.
In the Marble Mountains, in northern California, about 7 miles from camp, which was another 8 back to the trailhead. My sister got bitten by a dog when she was on her bike. We were riding past this house, and this dog knocks her down, and bites her leg very badly. She went to the hospital for it. The dog owners didn't get in trouble, becuase there was this "one bite rule" where the dog basically gets a free attack before they can really do much about it. And the home owner didn't pay the hospital bill. We ended up consulting an attorney, but there was some other weird circumstance where we couldn't sue or anything.
Holy Crap! In the wilderness no less! That would add points to my fear factor for certain. Bears were wiped out in this region a century ago but black bears have been spotted for the 1st time in decades in Missouri's Ozark Mountains. And in Kansas City and all the suburbs there is a pitbull ban due to a startling rash of pitbull attacks in the area. Several fatal. If your dog attacks here you in deep shit, especially if it is a pitbull. One man was fined and sued into poverty here when he left 2 pitbulls inside of a house he was remodeling, due to burglaries in the neighborhood. Guess what happened!? Two thugs broke in and one was attacked and killed. The dogs then got out and rampaged through the (ghetto) neighborhood and attacked and killed an elderly woman walking along the street. I feel for the guy myself. He is in legal deep shit too.
My wife's African Grey never liked me. She used to hide behind the toilet and then leap out and bite my toes. Then she'd lurk under the kitchen sink, perching on the edge of the trash can, and when I'd open the door to throw something away she'd bite my hand. She was pretty much an in-your-face kind of bird, one of our dogs eventually got tired of it and killed her. But the best story is about a snake. Before we got into parrots we had a grosbeak that we'd rescued after falling out of her nest as a baby. We hand fed her and kept her around as a pet. She was a bit lame from that fall and never healed right, so she just flew around inside the house wobbling like a diesel helicopter and having a great time. She liked to perch on our favorite brass lamp and warm her butt with the bulb, and naturally the brass got pretty discolored from all the poop. My wife got tired of this and heard that birds have an instinctive fear of snakes: the only predators that can follow them out onto the thin branches where they sleep. So we got this nifty rubber snake and attached it to the lampshade to scare the bird off. Grosbeaks are really ballsy little birds and it turns out she wasn't fazed at all. While we were out shopping apparently she said, "What's this damn reptile doing on my favorite lamp? Take this, you sonofabitch, wham wham wham!" I guess the cats found it where she tossed it and played with it a little bit and when they got tired of it they dropped it right inside the front door. (They were her best buddies, but dogs and birds are a deadly combination.) We got back from our shopping trip, my wife opened the door, turned on the light, and there was this OHMYGOD THERE'S A SNAKE IN THE HOUSE OH HELP HELP OMYGOD on the floor staring at her as she dropped the groceries. Never in my life have I ever seen such a perfect case of poetic justice.
LOL!! But I feel sad for the African Grey. They can outlive humans and they are so rare and intelligent.
animal attacks? only one i can think of is getting bitten by some form of ants while in australia. stung like hell.
African Greys are the best mimics. I always tell women that if their husbands aren't diligent about fixing stuff they should get a Grey. They learn to make the sounds of the squeaking doors and thumping pipes, ONLY MUCH MUCH LOUDER AND MORE OFTEN. They're not exactly rare, though, they're almost as easy to breed as chickens. It's a lot of work though, they have to be hand-fed from the day their eyes open in order to imprint on humans. Large commercial breeding operations have the advantage with employees working in shifts instead of a private breeder having to get up several times a night for feedings just like a human baby. All of the larger psittacines including macaws, cockatoos, etc. have potentially impressive life expectancies. However all birds are so fragile with their hollow bones and primitive immune systems, all the weight stripped off of them for flight. It's not easy to keep them from suffering an ignominious death due to a common infection or a household accident. To love birds is to live with nearly constant grieving. Don't even think about loving birds and dogs in the same lifetime.
I ran over a raccoon by accident. I was driving on the highway late at night, and saw the raccon crossing the huge highway. I was in the left lane, and it crossed passed heading right. I was about to pass right by it, but upon noticing my car coming, it got scared. The dumb raccoon turned right around to head back, and ran right under my car.
I am 22... and I have never been the victim of an animal attack. However I do recall throwing rocks at a girl once.
When I was in the 4th grade, I was deep in the Bornean rainforest with my family, at a research station. One night, when we were in the food hut, all sorts of bugs started crawling out of the floorboards. Big, nasty mean bugs, like 13 inch centipedes, spiders, etc. Then we realized it was because marauding fire ants were swarming under the hut and getting into our food. So the head researcher gets out a propane tank, a piece of metal tubing, and an aluminum pipe, hooks it all together and voila, instant flamethrower. Then he waded out to fight the swarm, bursts of fire illuminating hundreds of thousands of black, glistening ant bodies. It looked like very dark water pouring towards him, then breaking about the spouting flame to rush at his feet. Eventually he beat the fire ants at their own game. In the morning there were tens of thousands of still twitching casualties, warped by flame. It was pretty bad ass. I've been chased by grizzlies. Once on a whitewater river in ANWR, I had pulled over to dump my boat out, right as a grizzly crested a nearby ridge, saw us in the water, and bared straight for us. We all quickly got back in the boats, of course, but the griz just kept coming. He followed us for a ways as we struggled through class III and IV water, until finally it took off. I've also been stalked by grizzlies along the foothills of the Brooks Range. They like to hide in fog. Everytime a fog bank would roll over, then roll out, the damned bear would be closer. One morning we woke up to a grizzly and her almost 3 full grown cubs, charging our camp from about a mile away at a full gallop. Had a lot of run ins with moose, biking in the winter time. Been charged by a few. Had to ditch everything and run into the woods. Then the damned beast guarded my bike and pack until I chased her calf off with snowballs. Ran into bulls, too. They like to show off what bad asses they are by kicking. Moose are terryfingly nimble. They're the size of cars and kick like Chuck Norris.
I was running down a sidewalk, and these two small dogs surrounded me. One was just barking, and the other was REALLY violent, making biting motions, coming an inch away from my leg. Everytime I tried to get away, they would surround me again. This went on for about fifiteen minutes. I was like, WTF?
