Attacked while cabbing

titaniumkid If you want a laugh and can find a copy, read "A Sunburned Country" by Bill Bryson. He's a very good writer and takes full advantage of the humor to be found in Americans' paranoia about the spiders, snakes, crocs and other beasties to be found on a trip to OZ.

My personal concern is snakes, and in the Outback where the opals and many other gems are to be found, there seem to be a great many venomous types. At least our Western rattlers give you warning -- most of the time. But you're right about our large predators. A man was killed by a bear 2-3 miles from my house about a year ago. The poor guy was taking a break from building his cabin, drinking a cup of coffee and reading.

I grew up near Yellowstone Park and my hometown had the closest hospital to the Park's Western side. During tourist season it was filled with Park visitors who were missing hands or other body parts from feeding the bears. Bears don't know where the snack ends and food begins -- it's all food to them. Currrently, the biggest threat to tourists seems to be bison/buffalo. Or I should say, dumb tourist s who think wild animals are all friendly, lovable Disney creatures. Bison are huge, powerful, nasty-tempered animals, to be respected and avoided.

On a visit there a few years ago one blocked our car on the roadway. It was in a really foul mood with fire in its huge dark eyes. My wife was driving. and it finally decided to walk by the car. But it paused next to her window and for a moment it appeared it would attack with its big horns that were very close to her head. It finally decided to walk on, to our mutual relief. But many tourists deliberately try to approach and pet them, often with injurious or deadly results.

I just finished Blood Meridian, so I need another excellent American novel to read. I'll search for it

The snakes here are pretty tame. Sure, they don't rattle, but I think you really have to go out of your way and threaten them to get bitten. It usually happens when people try to pick them up or kill them. At work, we stomped around when walking through long grass to give them a chance to slink away and were careful where we put our hands when climbing river banks.

I've seen videos of idiots trying to get selfies with bison. Those people are disrespectful and deserve a good goring.

The fact a bison eyeballed your wife and a man was killed by a bear near your house shows just how wild and dangerous America is. 

That’s what I got the German shepherds for 😂.

Well, titaniumkid and gemfeller I will say it was nice that I didn’t get killed by the black bear a number of years ago who wandered up behind me and proceeded to rummage through my campsite. Campgrounds here have signs telling you to not keep any food or anything scented in your car. Bears can peel the doors open like a sardine can. My car alarm actually went off in the middle of the night and there were paw swipes on it the next morning. I think the alarm helped. We didn’t even have anything kept inside and she tried anyway. They say to make as much annoying noise as possible to get them to leave. But, she didn’t seem to care that I had beaten the bajeezus out of a pot and ladle earlier at dinner when she was ransacking my camp. Pretty much just took her sweet time. I remember her picking up my camera bag, with my brand new digital camera inside, letting it dangle from the strap for a moment while she looked at it, and then tossing it!🤣 She wasn’t aggressive but I also just stumbled into dumb luck. She startled me when she came up behind me and my sudden movement could’ve been an issue, as well as the direction I ended up moving. I saw later she had had a cub waiting a ways away. If I’d unknowingly moved between her and the cub I might’ve had more trouble but luckily I moved the other way.
I’ve had a number of dumb luck encounters with wild animals. When I was a young teen my folks built a house in the country. The land had to be cleared. When we started living there I took the bus to and from school. Our driveway was long and partly through the woods. I had a number of encounters on that road. Bobcat, porcupine, rattlesnake, to name a few. Several went unidentified. This was before the internet. A smart phone would’ve been nice. Most of them I didn’t know the exact identity or name of. So I’d describe them at dinner to my folks. I think they thought I was making sh*t up. I had no knowledge of these critters except for the fact that I’d seen them up close and so would just describe them in the greatest detail possible. None of them ran from me. In fact they kinda held their ground, and I needed to get home, so, after pausing for a moment, I just walked right by them, both of us on the same road within a couple feet of each other. The rattle snake was stretched across the entire road, in the sun. I couldn’t go around him. There were deep ditches hard to navigate on both sides. So, I just took a wide step over him. He rattled at me. I didn’t know any better. I almost wonder if these animals could sense that I was a kid.

titaniumkid America these days is definitely wild and dangerous. But it's the feral 2-legged creatures here that frighten me the most. They're to be found mostly in large cities.

I've had that experience too. That's one of the many reasons I live in AZ. Both open and concealed carry are totally legal. I ran into a scary situation in a very remote area of Utah several years ago, so I know the danger's not restricted to cities. You'll note I said "mostly."

I haven't felt the need to carry guns rock hounding but I don't go to as remote places as you go.  However, when I was with Rob in Petoskey (small town USA) and we were going to the second location, I think I told Rob that I have never seen anyone on this beach since the bike trail collapsed although I know there are people who go there from the stacked stones.   It was early April not long after the snow had melted so not a lot of people out looking for rocks.  Rob and I were making our way down the beach when I don't know if I heard him coming up or he said hello but all of a sudden there was someone 15 feet from us.   I think it startled both of us that he was all of the sudden there right by us.   He was a pretty good sized guy and I seem to remember that he was wearing a tee shirt on a 40 degree day with the wind blowing.   Seemed like he was out for a hike and didn't know how to get around the collapsed bike trail.  If you saw someone else rockhouding it would be ok but when they just appear ...   It was fine, but you never know.  

realrockhound I have a batch of 4 feral kittens behind the stored refrigerator in the "alcove porch" of our guest house. Gonna cost me about 70 bucks to trap momma and get her fixed before she goes into heat again. Then there's the kittens, it is literally illegal to relocate feral cats in AZ, the feral female will have to be returned and released. Elizabeth has been feeding her and "fluffy", who fortunately has the ear tip notch of a fixed cat, but now there's the other 4. I Should ask Elizabeth not to feed them, in the full knowledge that she will when I'm not looking, but why bother. Taco has become so blind that if they freeze he can't see them, but he can smell them and it drives him nuts.
"Cheeks", the large tiger stripe feral male who decided I was his buddy, is clearly departed, but it looks like his son has begun to attempt to join the group. Some days I'd rather have a tarantula hawk wasp sting, hear they are in the top 10 of pain.
Rattlers here never rattle till you are beginning the "relocation" process, but if the cats won't hunt an area of the property it's time to make sure all the ground squirrel holes are filled in and move the wood piles. Cats also eat scorpions, can't hate them for that.

YES!!!!!!!!!!! The cats around here that are some jerk's pets are mangy, diseased things that keep crapping ON the flowers out the front and as soon as the dog goes outside she is straight into it   Not to mention the threat to native birds. I called the council because if a dog wanders like this it's a crime, but apparently they won't do anything unless I personally trap the cat and call them out. They'd rather I confront the savage drug-addicted terrifying neighbours about it first... and I'm not going to because that's not how I want to leave this world. My sister (a vet) suggested putting paracetamol in cat food and leaving it out for the cats, but I don't want to hurt the cats, just their owners. I found a half-eaten possum on the roof from a powerful owl, so I'm hoping that thing comes back and takes care of the resident ferals.