Instances where you were startled by an animal

[brownfeet]

i'll tell the one that my wife still laughs about every now and then. We had recently moved into the place we live in now, it's early in the morning and I'm letting the dogs out in the backyard so they can do their thing. I walk outside as well and am walking over by the rose bush area (there was also some tall grass in the area). I hear what sounds like a rattle, I slowly back off but make sure the dogs don't wander by that area. I get the dogs inside and walk over again and hear the rattle again, I toss something over there and yup hear it again. Call animal control and they come over, he's poking around w/snake catching stick and nothing. then we hear it again, he looks at me and says "is that what you heard?". I nod my head. says its cicada (or another bug, forget) not a snake. I apologize and explain I just moved to the state and was nervous. says he gets them a lot but I think he said that to make me feel better.

tldr;
-go outside w/dogs
-hear rattle sound
-call animal control
-turns out it's a bug and I'm crazy
-wife makes rattling sounds near rose bushes to laugh at me

 

[Gutter Chris]

Was in Yellow stone On a trail with my ma and came around a blind corner and found ourselves about 6 feet from a single male buffalo. We startled it and it stood up. We backed up asap and thankfully thats all there is to the tale.

 

[anthony stark]

I get startled by dogs a lot

 

[Jermei]

I was within arms reach of a Black Bear in Whistler many years ago. I was taking out the trash, walked up stairs to the parking lot and at the top step was a shadow that waddled away from me, but it was a bears ass.

I went back to the ground level suite that had a thin long window high up but level with the parking lot and the bear was sniffing a window right across from us with like 4-5 people standing at their suites window probably as close to a bear as they ever got.

 

[Jermei]

Was in Yellow stone On a trail with my ma and came around a blind corner and found ourselves about 6 feet from a single male buffalo. We startled it and it stood up. We backed up asap and thankfully thats all there is to the tale.

Wow. Tatanka.

 

[Jermei]

So I used to live in Chicago about 3 years ago. I was parking my car at about 9PM, and I heard a 2 wheeled plastic garbage can moving. I look over expecting to see a neighbor taking out the garbage. I don't see anything though. Then emerged the largest rat I have ever seen. The rat was the size of a small dog, and had the stare of a game pit. I glare at it in an attempt to establish dominance , and it stares back with a blank stare with dead beady black eyes. I stomp my foot and lunge at the rat in an attempt to scare it off. Instead of it being frightened, it comes straight at me. I run away like a little girl.

I turn back and see the rat run under my car.

Flash forward 2 weeks.

My check engine light comes on in my LS400. I scan the car via the on board diagnostics port. It says the knock sensor is not working correctly. I google this, and because it is a V8 it is down in the vee and requires removal of the intake manifold etc. I remove the intake manifold and find that the rat made a nest, and there were bird bones, and other dead animal carcasses along with beading material. The wires for the knock sensor had been chewed off. Apparently the rat liked the warm engine and was living in the vee at night.

wtf how did it get in there... chew through the air filter?

 

[Andersons Foot]

I was jogging in the presidio around 10 at night a year or two back. Turned down a trail and two coyote howls broke out in the bushes, about fifteen feet in front on the right of the trail and another on the left about thirty feet off.

I turned around the other way, like a bitch.

I know nothing of Coyotes and their habits, what are the chances that they would attack in a situation like that? Like i said in the OP, one ran out of the woods about 10 feet from me once. It jogged ahead and looked back a few times but it didn't look too interested in me, not scared either though, it just lightly jogged away.

@Zookeeper Gabe I'm sure you'd know something about this.

 

[mmaelitefan000]

one time while fishing at a park i was attacked by a mother goose defending it's offspring.

 

[luv24nic8]

I live near Glacier National Park - Grizzley bears scare the heck out of me, since I usually dont carry a gun in the park or out in the US forest land, meeting one of those bad boys on a trail makes your butt pucker. Also, when I lived in Atlanta, I was stared down by black guys all the time- they always looked like they wanted to kill me, then eat me. Personally, Id rather take my chances with bears rather than hood rats, any day.

 

[Daveb]

When I was 18 I worked for a summer at the evergreen lodge in Yosemite national park as a maid. ( I banged one of the other maids who was a chick from Croatia. Chicks who survive war crimes sure know how to fuck)They had a staff dorm which was near the resteraunt. I would sneak into the kitchen at night and munch on sweets.

One night I was gong back to the dorms with a handful of cookies. Between the resteraunt and the dorms was a dumpster. Rummaging through the dumpster was a big ass black bear. We both were startled. The bear raised up on his hind legs. I stuffed the cookies in my mouth figuring if I was to die I wanted to die with the taste of chocolate chip on my tongue.

I backed up slowly and went back inside the resteraunt. Spent an hour waiting around until I could sneak back to the dorm

 

[badascan]

Was picking blueberries in a wooded country setting with headphones on, by myself. In the back of my mind I knew I might see a bear being alone in the woods in northern Michigan around blueberries.

I'm jamming away not really paying attention when I feel something cold and wet on my right calf. luckily when I turned around it there was a golden retriever there and not a black bear. Was certainly startled.

 

[Kowboy Karl]

Walking up to a house to knock on the door to do an installation

Silence and fog outside

Early am

Take about 30 steps from car look up at the end of the drive way and slightly around the car there's a giant bull mastiff

Straight up sandlot dog.

I saw him he saw me I ran he chased

Went round and around my car

He tired

I lived

 

[powerBJJ]

when i was walking through the forrest and ran into this fucker

 

[fightingrabbit]

I know nothing of Coyotes and their habits, what are the chances that they would attack in a situation like that? Like i said in the OP, one ran out of the woods about 10 feet from me once. It jogged ahead and looked back a few times but it didn't look too interested in me, not scared either though, it just lightly jogged away.

@Zookeeper Gabe I'm sure you'd know something about this.

I didn't feel a sense of danger at all when I encountered the coyote, but I don't know if that's just ignorance on my part though. Maybe I should have been. It seemed more interested in doing it's thing than me. Like most wild animals, I'm sure they'd rather avoid humans unless you're near their pups or food source.

 

[El Chimpo]

jumped on an alligator swinging into the peace river


startled it...startled me..it took off one way...i took off another

 

[KONG-D'SNT-TAP]

when i was walking through the forrest and ran into this fuckerView attachment 112445

Bad computer art startled u ??

 

[CerebralKnievel]

I know nothing of Coyotes and their habits, what are the chances that they would attack in a situation like that? Like i said in the OP, one ran out of the woods about 10 feet from me once. It jogged ahead and looked back a few times but it didn't look too interested in me, not scared either though, it just lightly jogged away.

@Zookeeper Gabe I'm sure you'd know something about this.

Coyotes are nothing. I expect I could murder a dozen or more of them if I needed or wanted to. It was simply the awful shriek of their calls that startled me.

 

[CatchOmega]

I've walked up on black bears a few times. They don't usually give a shit but I'm always a little un-easy. Seen a cougar in the distance once when I was walking. I turned the fuck around and went home.

Nowadays I'm mostly startled with wasp nests. Pretty much every day during the summer I'll run into at least one during work. My record is probably about 3000-0 currently. No stings yet but plenty of dead wasps.

 

[RawHawg]

When we first moved to the country woods of sw Florida, I was not yet smartened up to the area and took my toddler daughter in a stroller for a walk in the woods on a path. I startled a mother hog in a drainage ditch that was hunkered down with a ton of babies. She stepped out on the path maybe 50 feet in front of me and squared off to me. I had no weapons on me and quickly looked around me for a climbable tree, but there was none close. The pig has tusks showing, and then put her head down and started scuffing the ground. I was positive she was going to charge, so I stood in front of the stroller and figured I was going to have to take one for the team, because there was no way she was getting to my child. Then, all the pig babies jumped up and ran away, and the mom pig looked at me like "you just got lucky punk", and ran off with her crew. After that I started carrying a gun on me, but I never had another incident like that since. Hogs are all over here and will even come in your own yard and tear it up if you don't deter them. I got lucky because I would have been seriously shredded had she attacked.

 

[CatchOmega]

Coyotes are nothing. I expect I could murder a dozen or more of them if I needed or wanted to. It was simply the awful shriek of their calls that startled me.

Coyotes are pussies but they do occasionally pack up and kill a weak human. I figure if you get taken out by a coyote your time is probably limited already.