It was pretty scary…
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I live in the Rocky Mountains, though I have never seen Cubs, they must of been adorable!
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Thank goodness for Dad!
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When I was about 9 years old I was exploring tide pools in Okinawa Japan and I saw a greenish-brown lump that looked squishy partially submerged on the edge of a pool. Being 9 I naturally poked at it to see what it was. It was very soft and slimy and suddenly I became aware of little circles all over the round lump. I tugged a little wanting to pick it up but it was stuck pretty tight and I thought it must be some sort of anemone so I let it be. Some weeks later I saw photos of a blue ringed octopus out of the water and it looked exactly like my mystery lump! My 9 year old self came that close to handling an exceptionally venomous sea creature without a clue.
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We live in a neighborhood that is surrounded by one of the largest parks around Charlotte, NC. Ever since we moved here nearly 20 years ago, there’s been a Coopers Hawk “couple” that makes the nest in various trees in the neighborhood. When one of our dogs was a puppy, we were worried that the hawk could snatch Kip up in his talons. Fortunately there were enough family members close by and when the hawk started swooping down, we all made a lot of noise to scare him/her off.
We also have a screened in porch in the back and one of two doors is always open so the dogs can go out to the fenced yard. Unfortunately, I came back from an appointment and noticed something flapping around in the screened porch as I pulled up the driveway. When I looked into the porch I saw the hawk and opened the other door hoping he would fly out. No such luck. So I grabbed a butterfly net to net him and bring him to the open door. I net him, his talons grip the net and I try to unhook one of the talons! Thankfully I had my fingers on the outside of the talon, yet I could still feel the strength! His back was up against the net and everything dangerous was pointing at me - talons and beak! I quickly ran inside to get some scissors so I could cut the net open. I carried/dragged the hawk near the closest door and cut my net! He immediately flew out and up into the trees! I was glad to have him visit, yet not move in! He wasn’t in the screened porch for more than an hour, probably less.
Usually when songbirds fly into the screened porch, we’ll open both doors and see if they will fly out themselves. If not we can usually coax them towards a door just by walking near them while also making sure they head that way. Occasionally they have no idea so we’ll net them and bring them by the door for release.
We’ve had several nests of birds inside the porch in the rafters. One day we noticed a fairly large hole near the top of the screen and figured a squirrel got in to get nestlings. Another time my daughter was watching a nest with nestlings and taking pictures when the parents were gone. She later told me about seeing a snake head peer over the side of the rafters, so she knew the birds were gone. I stood guard over the area waiting for the snake to show himself. It was then that I saw how he made his way to the birds. So I went inside the house and got my “reaching stick” and a 5 gallon bucket from Home Depot. When he was ready to make the turn in the porch, I grabbed him with the reaching stick and put him in the bucket and put a lid on it and in the shade. The reaching stick has suction cups on each side and it’s not a firm grip at all. My husband released him the next hour into the park by our home. Hopefully not to see him again! And the thing is, I had a very small pet black rat snake as a pet in college. Of course no one wanted to dorm with me 
And red fire ants! I was taking pictures of a cool old car sitting in tall dry weeds, with the intention of painting the scene. All of a sudden, my legs were being bitten up! I didn’t see a raised nest or anything yet I got clobbered! I ran back to my car and on the way home I tried killing as many on my legs as possible by using my socks to smush them. Some still made it up to my knees when I reached my home. When I went inside the house, I ran upstairs to take a shower to wash them off. I told my husband to be careful with my clothes because I was bitten by fire ants and some may still be on my clothes. I ended up going to the doctors because there were so many and I received an injection which helped a lot with the itching and burning feelings.
Now when any fire ants show up in our yard, we surround the nest with a fire ant killer and if it’s in the dog area, we’ll fence that area off. Sometimes they’ll move to another area and we’ll keep surrounding the nest with the ant killer, yet never do the whole yard with it because the other ants aren’t bothering anyone.
Hawks, snakes and fire ants! Oh my!
I’m 62 and my entomology cabinet is filling up, I collect no more than 2 pairs of a species if I’m able to collect that many. I don’t see the point of filling a whole drawer with a bunch of the same species unless you’re a larger institution. I started netting dragonflies and damselflies. With the screened porch, I’m able to add to my collection by the various butterflies and moths that make it inside and don’t make it out. It’s only when they’re dead and on the floor that I find them. When it warms up I plan to increase my spider collection. I’m hoping to collect a black widow and brown recluse, very carefully of course!
Cathy
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Oh, yes. The tropical fire ants in the Dominican Republic are great at making their nests invisible until you are standing on it – or digging into it to work on a garden.
There is no winning over the tropical fire ant. I use the ant killer to knock them back from the one spot where I need to work, knowing they’ll be back soon after I am done. And I’m a dedicated organic gardener; I hated having to resort to ant powder, but I just couldn’t find any other way!
I’d rather run into the trap-jaw ants. Their bite hurts more, but at least they don’t swarm you! You’ll most likely only be bitten by one.
Wow - what a thread !!
What amazing stories, thanks @ haemocyanin11 for starting this off.
I hope it was / is ok to laugh at some of these experiences. I understand some people might still be reeling from the effects / after effects but hope your sharing makes it a bit more tolerable.
In the same spirit I do hope you get a laugh out of what follows
Many years ago (1994) I had just started a job in a non-profit that was working with communities to regenerate / grow forests in the dry landscape of Anand District, Gujarat, India. .
Part of my in-job training was the wonderful opportunity to visit all the village forests and experience, first hand, what was happening.
In some cases the forests regenerated, on really degraded lands, were beginning to look fairly natural and even had the good forest darkness and coolness when one walked through.
The regenerating forests were mainly thorny dry deciduous - predominantly Acacia species, along with the non native Prosopis juliflora and a variety of thorn scrub bushes - these of course made walking hard with the long thorns finding ways to get into the footwear, and making pointed rips of clothes. Despite which I always wore short sleeves - thinking that thorn scratches were less a nuisance than the heat.
The secretary of a forest committee and I were going about our business on an afternoon of what was already a very hot dry summer day. We were exploring another such community forest - which has to be said - was really great (natural regeneration was taking over, a bewildering variety of shrubs and climbers were now growing on their own)
Being really interested in plants I was constantly touching and feeling (and smelling leaves) and chanced upon some leguminous pods of some climber that I had only heard of and never seen - they were some distance above me and my attempts to get at them failed the only reward being showered with some fine leaf dust (or something).
Some short time later while exiting the forest I was enveloped by a severe itching frenzy, meanwhile the secretary had discreetly distanced himself from me and I guess was going to have a good laugh at my expense. He however could not tell me what caused the itching or provide a solution except to change my clothes.
Being far from habitation and of course with no water source nearby I had to suffer a few hours of walking and public transport before getting back home, By then, with the exception of my face and legs the rest of the body was covered in red rashes and it was severely itchy. (i suspect the red rash was because I was almost uncontrollably itching).
At home I had a long cold shower and of course dumped the clothes far away not knowing what the cause was. As my house mates were still at work I had no one to consult so kept have frequent cold baths - which seemed to help. It took about 24 hours for the itchiness and rash to subside and another 24 hours before I felt “normal”. No hospital visit was required.
Meanwhile theories of what caused the itching / allergic reaction were many and the blame seemed to fall on some hairy moths and their itchy hair.
However some months later, during the monsoons, I re-visited the site of the itchy forest crime and found the culprit. The hair from the dried pods of the infamous “Velvet Beans or mad beans” or Mucuna pruriens or its leaf / leaf dust that I had showered in. (Edit - Locally called Kavach or Konch)
Since then whenever I get a chance to visit dry deciduous forests I keep my “plant touching fingers” all under control and insists on wearing high collar full sleeves shirts and keep a “beady” eye out for itchy plants.
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I’m the same way as far as avoiding pesticides, insecticides, etc. My DH and I are also members of the North Carolina Native Plant Society, so we removed lots of invasive and introduced flora, while encouraging the native plants to attract the native insects. The insects are used to feed birds and their young. I tell people “we have clean bugs” while they reply that they don’t want any bugs.
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I was coming home from grocery shopping, and our dog (mostly Lab but also Pit Bull–looks like his Pit Bull ancestors but acts like a Lab) was barking at a tree near his dog house. My first instinct was to pull out my phone to get a pic of the possum or raccoon he had accidentally treed, and then I was going to pull the dog away so the animal could get down. I started over and squinted up into the tree. The dog had treed a young bear which was hanging over the dog and myself looking to make a break for it. I backed away and called the local police who refused to come out–game warden’s job, they said. The game warden is an hour away . . . I frantically called my brother because I was afraid the bear was going to drop down on the dog. He wasn’t home, but said he’d be there ASAP. Meanwhile, my niece came home. Said, “We can’t have this.” Inched up to dog, unhooked him, and then held on for dear life as dog tried to pull her toward the bear. Finally, she pulled hard enough to get some distance (I couldn’t have managed that–this is a big dog), and my brother arrived an pulled the dog toward the house, The bear climbed down and took off. I got my iNat pics from a distance, but sheesh–none of us have ever been so frightened by an animal encounter.
(PS I freely admit to being a total coward.)
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Fun thread. Here’s a moment I will never forget. I still lived in Delaware so I was probably in the Brandywine Creek park. It was a bright, sunny day, but my walk was mostly in the woods. As I emerged from the woods I felt a whoosh of air and saw the huge shadow of a pterodactyl! Or so it seemed. A turkey vulture was coming in for a landing to check out a dead rabbit on the trail and hadn’t seen me. We arrived at the spot at virtually the same moment and the bright sun created an enormous shadow of the enormous bird, wings spread. It was thrilling.
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omigod, this thread is AMAZING. Seriously the best thing I’ve read in a while, and, I love all of you.
I try to tell people that our wild places are the ones were they are actually safest. People always ask me “aren’t you afraid of getting attacked by a mountain lion, a rattlesnake, a great white shark…” and I like to ask them if they are afraid of cows, because they are about forty times more likely to be killed by one of them, and don’t even get me started on cars. If a mountain lion is what gets me i’ll count myself lucky. Really, anyone who has ever had dysentery has faced something deadlier than a t rex on methamphetamines. My closest call was one I never expected and it gave me a new respect for the power of a little knowledge and the lack of it.
I’m a jeweler and I cut and shape gemstones, mostly turquoise and opal from over in Nevada, but I love to work with the agate and abalone I find on the coast here in California. When I first started cutting stones I had been shaping abalone all day and decided to go for a late afternoon hike to unwind, off trail, in thick woodland on utility district land, about as far away from people as you can get were I live. It started off great, a beautiful day in early summer discovering wild and untouched habitat, everything in bloom, I was a bit short of breath which was unusual, but I was enjoying myself. I remember it being very dreamy and beautiful, everything was soft and magical… And then I started seeing stars. I was on my knees and didn’t remember how i got there. But at that time I still hadn’t realized something was very wrong, so I stood up and kept hiking and after a bit it all went dark around the edges and there were little stars slowly flashing. I sat down. Was I having a stroke? A heart attack? No, there was no pain, it was something else, all I knew was that I was in trouble and I was a long way away from were anyone would ever find me. This was before I had a phone. I sat for a bit and then got up and walked till the stars came back. Then I sat down again and when they went away i got up and walked till they came back, over and over for miles. By the time i got back to my car it was well after dark. I was really afraid I’d pass out behind the wheel, but it seemed that when sitting down i was relatively stable so i risked driving home. My mind ran through all the possibilities, Lyme disease, hunta virus, but nothing fit, then I wondered if it was an allergic reaction to abolone, i had been grinding it all day with no respirator, dry, my face covered in abalone dust, so I looked it up on the internet. The first result I saw was from an incident at a gun handle factory in Monterey, not far away from where I live; every single worker in the factory had died as a result of carving abalone without respiratory protection. The next page was on silicosis, commonly known as black lung, incurable and degenerative. I spent the drive to the hospital and the time in the waiting room wondering if these would be my last memories of life on this earth, the doctor saw me very quickly, there was a woman in labor sitting next to me in the e.r. waiting room, her husband holding her hand, the doctors saw me first, and that didn’t inspire confidence. Turns out, aside from being comprised entirely of silica, one of the deadliest particulates a person can inhale, abalone host a microorganism that cause a severe autoimmune reaction in people when inhaled, causing respiratory failure. What you don’t know right. Some (many?) hours later after being on a ventilator with steroids they sent me home. When I asked the doctor before they released me if this was going to cause me further trouble, like shortening my life expectancy, he said “well, we don’t have any other cases or records to make any predictions, so, just don’t worry about it and see what happens.” So far so good.
Ok, i know this is already too long but as a mushroom hunter I feel a moral obligation to tell a mushroom story. I apologize, skip this if I’m being tedious. I was headed up to a spot I’d noticed the day before, but it had gotten dark before I was able to make it there. I ran into a couple of Young mushroom hunters headed home for the day without finding anything and we hit it off so I took them up to this area I thought would be good and sure enough we started finding chanterelles, big late season chanterelles, beautiful and gold, the size of salad plates. We cleared a big saddle in the ridge that had a few deep canyons going back and forth, we were almost to the top of the ridge under the drip line of the highest oaks, and there it was, amanita phalliodes, the deathcap, almost golden in the setting sun. The guy I was with picked it (a fellow inatter with amazing knowledge of fungi and a really incredible human being.) we talked about various amanita’s, how delicious the velosa is, about parboiling muscaria and eating it, pantherina as a psychotropic… Then he tells me how he’s heard deathcaps are actually delicious and that they are only deadly when digested. I say I know but could you imagine the dread, the lingering fear after putting one in your mouth knowing what they can do?.. Long silence… I say “don’t”… “Really…please don’t do that man, you don’t need to prove anything to me. Please.” Without any hesitation he splits off a centimeter piece and pops it straight into his mouth. He presses it against his pallet with his tongue, chews it for a bit, then spits it out. That is the most horrifying thing I have ever watched, ever, and I’ve seen some things. But more than that it was beautiful. It wasn’t about bravodo or showing off, it was simply a complete and unflinching faith in the efficacy of science and in that moment I realized that I didn’t have that same faith, but that I wished I did, because science was right, he was fine. I was still holding on to those primal fears of something unknown.
He said it tasted nice, just plain and mushroomy. He is one of only a few people who knows the taste of one of the deadliest mushrooms in the world, maybe one day I’ll be able to follow in his footsteps, but not anytime soon.
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Once I was birdwatching in an area with a large population of Feral Hogs, I was in a small thin levee surrounded by wetlands and found some Common Yellowthroats and Marsh Wrens in the reeds. I later turned around and found groups of hogs blocking off both sides to escape, they weren’t too close but they where coming my direction. I decided to go to the side of the levee and sit down, I stayed there until they went back into the marsh (I’m still not sure if that was the best thing to do in a situation like that as the animal had the high ground, but it worked) For some reason the situation never felt too scary, even though they probably got within a little over 15 feet from me. I had seen Feral Hogs before but never that close.
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Great abalone story… had no idea the shell could be toxic. The amanita story is so well told, too - I felt like I was there!
I might have been scared. Feral hogs can be pretty big.
Great stories!
An experience: For fun, when I was quite small I tried to interrogate an Asian Common Toad (Duttaphrynus melanostictus) when it soon got fed up and literally CHASED ME 
. I fled like an idiot!
More: I was trying to get up close to observe what I thought was a Loten’s sunbird (Cinnyris lotenius), when my leg was MURDERED 
. By whom, you ask? FIRE ANTS!!!. It turned out that I was standing right on top of their mound. It’s PAIN, PAIN, BURNING, PAIN AND PAIN AND PAIN… 
(It’s the Tropical Fire Ant (Solenopsis geminata) in case you wonder how Solenopsis invicta or Myrmica sp. could have gotten here. I’m in Sri Lanka). Fire ant mass attacks
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But the most painful sting/bite I have experienced was just a bite from: an Asian Weaver Ant (Oecophylla smaragdina). They don’t sting, yes, but because of that their bites are TERRIBLE. It’s like your skin is getting both pricked and is caving in. Only one individual bit me on the left side of my ear, near my jaw socket. But luckily I got rid of it pretty quickly.
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Very much relatable with the fire ants part. But I felt only little pain at Asian Weaver ant bites and I was bitten by them a lot of times mostly when I go for fishing near mangroves and other places with lot’s of trees.
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Actually, I was bitten by the weavers very near my face, which is an EXTREMELY sensitive area, unlike the arms, feet and chest.
This is why I’m also terrified of them!
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