I was camping on Mount Kenya with a friend - we were the only people at the camping area at the trailhead, as our guide had gone back to spend the night at the national park gate, maybe 5 miles away. In the middle of the night we were woken up by loud snuffling and munching noises - the sound of a large animal ripping up and chewing grass, extremely close to the very thin nylon walls of our tent, which we had pitched right in the centre of the lushest, tastiest patch of grass in the area. I’m not sure how long we lay there in silence before it eventually moved off. In the morning we found a large pile of droppings that our guide later identified as Cape buffalo (adult weight ~1800lb).
Then there’s the time I was walking alone in the bush near Victoria Falls. Tuned a corner in the path and there was an elephant standing under a tree about 50 yards ahead of me. I stood watching for a whole before deciding the trunk-in-the-air pose was probably my cue to make a dignified retreat.
On a more local and mundane, but painful, level, last summer I was mountain-biking, doing about 35mph on a grassy downhill when a bee flew down the neck of my T-shirt, got trapped under the chest-strap of my rucksack and stung me. I provided plenty of entertainment to my companions as I hurled my rucksack off and pulled my T-shirt over my head while struggling to skid to a stop.
Growing up in rural central Pennsylvania I had a fair share of encounters with black bears. One stood out as particularly amusing. My cousin, a mutual friend, and I were returning from town when we saw a bear amble into the cousin’s front yard. The bear backed up against my aunt’s favorite dogwood tree and used it to scratch his back. (Of course you have to understand this is central PA, where there are about a billion trees, so why this tree looked like a good one to use is beyond me.) When the bear felt comfortable again, he wandered back across the road and into the endless forest. The poor tree got the worst of the encounter, as it was still listing at an awkward angle.
Now we had to go and explain to my aunt that it was a bear that tried to wreck her dogwood tree, and not us cooking up some firework-related scheme.
I have been hugely fortunate to see much of what I only dreamed of as a child. Everything seemed so remote from Alaska, where I was born and raised. My biggest aspiration as a child was to see Disneyland (which I’ve done ), but that pales by comparison to what is out there.
One of the great gifts of travel is seeing wildlife. Last summer on our honeymoon, my Dearly Beloved and I tried to find moose. Northern New Hampshire. Dusk. Bogs. Lakes. PRIME moose territory. Moose Tours leaving every evening. We never saw one. The last night, I chickened out and followed a moose tour bus. They cheated !! They use immensely powerful spotlights to search the surrounding forest for moose. And sure enough, they found a cow and calf. We piled out and walked along the road, and shot a few photos. From very far off. It was remarkable to me how close some people got to that cow and her calf.
My stemother’s grandson was able to pet a deer in West Virginia. He kept approaching closer and closer until it reached out and licked his hand, maybe he had salt on it. IIRC it was up in the mountains in the parking area for Beartown (cool rock formations in the woods, maybe a collapsed cave.)
Speaking of caves, once while spelunking I had a bat land on my hand and attach it’s feet to my glove. I could not get the sucker off, I pulled until I thought his legs would break off. He finally let go though.
Living across the road from a wildlife preserve of 300 some acres, we have deer, raccoon and possum in our yard and sometimes in our garage quite regularly. Lots of snakes come bask on our blacktop driveway. I had an encounter on our back porch with a great horned owl that wanted to eat my pug puppy I was taking out in the middle of the night to do her business.
The most dangerous encounter was probably rafting down the Kenai River in Alaska where we drifted around a corner and came across a mama moose and a baby. The guide whispered, “Do not move! Don’t make a sound!” as we huddled in the raft and tried to look harmless. We were probably about 15 feet away, and she apparently didn’t think we were much of a threat, thankfully.
I once lured a squirrel onto my brother’s shoulder with a Cheeto. It was a park where they were fairly tame from people feeding them anyway, and my brother was leaning on the top rail of a wooden fence, so the squirrel just walked over him.
I stepped over a snake in the woods and was so surprised I stepped back over him. He was pretty casual about it.
I fed doughnuts to some deer at a motel in California. Again, they were somewhat tame and apparently liked to join motel guests for the continental breakfast.
Not too long ago, I encountered a raccoon in the woods near our house. I tossed a dog biscuit toward him and he approached me to get it… I later learned that healthy coons don’t do stuff like that and he might have had rabies.
I hope to see a moose someday.
I think I’m forgetting something, but y’all’s are way cooler than mine anyway.
I run into bears quite a bit but, the most memorable time was when I was doing about 35mph around a long curve on a 4-wheeler. Right smack in the middle of the road was a fairly large black bear taking a crap, leaning back with his butt all scrunched up underneath him. I came to stop about 20 feet from him and almost in slow motion, he cocked his head to the side so he could face me, shot me a look of total disgust, then ran off into the woods, interrupted in his business.
Scary - A BIG Barracuda came within about 6 inches from my face while I was snorkeling off the coast of Grenada in 1988. I was floating looking down and almost drifted right into it.
Not Scary - also in 1988, in Key West, FL, I was “attacked” by a Pelican (I offered it a cigarette and it tried to eat my whole arm).
Scary - A BIG Barracuda came within about 6 inches from my face while I was snorkeling off the coast of Grenada in 1988. I was floating looking down and almost drifted right into it.:eek:
Not Scary - also in 1988, in Key West, FL, I was “attacked” by a Pelican (I offered it a cigarette and it tried to eat my whole arm).
About 4 feet away from an adult male black back mountain gorilla in Uganda. Was on a gorilla-viewing trip. You’re supposed to stay ~20 feet away, but this one approached us.
I have to make sure my wife doesn’t see this post. We lived in Kampala for a year and tried three times to go gorilla trekking in Bwindi. We were frustrated all three times. One time it would have meant eight hours of jungle hiking each way, and possibly crossing over into the Congo. We just weren’t up to the task nor the danger.
I drove my son and his wife and boy all over hell in Alaska trying to find a moose for them to look at. Upon returning to home, there was a cow in the front yard contentedly munching on our crab apple tree. :dubious:
A beaver nearly scared the crap out of me by suddenly emerging from a pond about three feet from where I was standing. It looked me right in the eye for a second, and evidently I scared it as much as it scared me - it jumped back in, loudly slapping the water with its tail as it went.
Beavers are quite large and have intimidatingly large teeth (which are, oddly, bright orange!). After all, they are basically rats that can chew trees down.
For me, the most startling was when a huge hawk flew past within about a foot of my face. And the most dangerous was once in Yellowstone, when my dad insisted on driving right up next to a loitering of bison, putting the passenger seat (with me in it) about a foot away from a bull.
I’ve never been in a threatening situation with large carnivores. I’ve seen one black and one brown bear in the wild, but the brown was at least a couple hundred yards away guarding a deer carcass, with us all right next to our cars, and the black was so far that I could only just tell that it was a bear at all. I’ve been within maybe about 30 feet of a coyote, but again, that was from inside a car, and a coyote isn’t really a serious danger to a human, anyway.
That must be tremendously disappointing. When I went, there was a Polish couple who’d gone a decade before and hiked all day to not find them. I went from the Rohija station in the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest.
Lions ~ 4 feet - Ngorongoro Crater. We were in our truck and they decided to use the shade provided by the truck and laid down behind us.
Hippos ~ 10 feet - Ngorongoro Crater. The hippo pool is at a picnic spot. They were in the water and didn’t seem to mind us wandering about. My wife was quite distressed when she later found out that the most dangerous animal in Africa is the hippo.
Elephant ~ 2 feet - Lake Manyara. In the safari truck an elephant wandered up the road between 2 vehicles. We ducked into the truck as he walked by. I could have stuck my hand out the window and touched him as he passed.
Moose ~ 10 feet - Prince Albert National Park, Saskatchewan. My mother and I were walking up a remote road looking for an abandoned access road to an old fur traders outpost. We were surprised to see an enormous moose standing 5 feet into the brush. His antlers were at least 4’ across. My first instinct was to run, but my mom held me there and the moose wandered off into the woods.
I was repairing out front porch one evening and felt something tappa-tappa-tapping on my shoe. I looked down to see a baby raccoon playing with my shoelaces. Had just enough time to think “Awwwww…” when angry momma came hissing around the corner looking for Junior. I was suitable intimidated - angry mommas can be damn threatening.
My husband was in Norway last weekend for a business trip. While driving he had his camera rollling to capture the landscape. He was hummin along to the Eagles “Hotel California” and had just come to the lyrics" What a nice surprise" when he had to brake the car for a mother moose (elk?) and her calf crossing the road in front of him. Here’s the clip on Youtube,, the elks cross at 5.02.
Everything is up close and personal in Ngorongoro Crater, with the monkeys and baboons being particularly fearless. The elephant herd there is pretty much the last of the really big tuskers. What a beautiful and wild place. Did you see the tree-climbing lions at Manyara?
), but that pales by comparison to what is out there.
