Ask Lemmy

A couple, both cold bird homicides. Each time the victims were one of these bastards.

One morning I wake up to the sound of one's infuriating chirping outside the window. It doesn't stop. I get up and go to the window to swat it or something. Open the window, look down, and one of these awesome bastards is standing on top of a pinned noisy miner, and looks right up at me like, "You didn't see nothin'." I raise my hands and back away from the window, the chirping starts up again and slowly fades and stops. Turns out currawongs will often prey on smaller birds and if those smaller birds are noisy miners, I'm cool with it.

The other time was a noisy miner picking on a crow that was trying to eat. The miner keeps swopping it until the crow catches it, gets on top, and drags it over to a puddle. Same eerie audio of a noisy miner going nuts, then suddenly silence as the crow just sticks its head underwater, stays standing on it until the thing's lifeless, and goes back to eating.

Invading Ukraine

Tiger in India.

She did nothing violent. I was watching from a tour 4wd from about 40m away. She was taking a drink on the other side of a creek for about 30s. Then lifted her head, looked at us and turned and loped up the steep hill behind her.

The effortless power of her acceleration of a body that big.

I was once hiking a mountain in New Mexico, and had a standoff with a vicious, off-leash and in-tact dog. I tried slowly backing down, but it kept advancing any ground I gave it. The owner for some reason refused to come down off the mountain to get his dog, until I yelled at him I would bash the dog's head in, and he'd still be on the hook for any injuries I sustained while doing it.

If we're including wildlife shows the scariest thing I've seen is on an old one called Last Feast of the Crocodiles which is set around a water hole that goes into drought.

These baboons lure a baby deer away from its mother by pretending to be friendly and then kill it so they can drink its blood. There's just something that bothers me way more than normal predators doing normal things.

In person or generally?

Because the most horrifying thing I've seen but not in person was a deer eating human corpses on a body farm.

A body farm is a scientific study where corpses are left out, exposed to the elements, and the decomposition is measured over time.

If you ever read the news and saw a story about a body being recovered and the officials estimated that they died x months ago, that's because of body farms...

But then this happens (NSFL pictures):

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/deer-eating-human-remains-decomposing-body-texas-state-university-journal-forensic-scientists-a7725386.html

Try to fucking kill me.

Feral dogs have mixed in with coyote in the area, and there's indication that the eastern coyote is mixed with wolf anyway.

But, it leads to small packs of canines that roam, usually with enough size per critter to be a problem even alone. They aren't usually huge, but we're talking anything from a little over knee height at the shoulder to a little under hip height. I'm 5'11". The ones that are more dog, and the actual dogs, tend to have a wider range of sizes than the coydogs. The coydogs, for all intents and purposes, are around coyote size, though they tend to have odd coloration and are a bit less lanky.

They're usually not going to outright attack anyone, even if you're alone, unless you're alone and have your dog with you (which isn't really alone, but you know what I mean). But I used to go out into the mountains by myself (after checking in with rangers).

A couple of times, I had some in the area I was hiking or camping with no issues. They are usually skittish. But twice over the years back then, conditions were bad for them, and I had food. The first of the two times, I scared them off. The second, I had to kill several, and may have stained an otherwise good pair of jeans by the end of it. Only had three rounds left in my second magazine too.

Didn't return to that area unless I knew conditions had been very good.

Ran into a bear once too. Not as in literally running into, but we saw each other through the woods, close as I'd ever want to get. Ngl, I may have stained those pants a little too, but the mud I fell in hid that. Stumbling backwards away from a bear doesn't let you see where you're going lol. Startled the bear, and we both took off running.

Seeing two horses fighting. The sheer size of them is enough to scare me, but getting aggresive biting and kicking was something else.

Probably wild/feral dogs stalking me through the bush. Which is scary because I've seen one ripping out the throats of sheep.

Pitbull/mastiff crosses that people use for pighunting (knife and dogs method) get lost in the bush sometimes and can form packs.

On an episode of BBC's: Planet Earth I saw an eagle grab a small goat, carry it off a cliff, and dropped it. Effective to be sure and kind of clever for the bird, but terrifying to watch.

Aggressive Shih-Tzu owner had stopped to chat with Cane Corso owners that kept them chained up out front while they sat on their porch, and her little bastard got bold. Corsos snapped their chains and were shaking him like a paper plate. The sound it made as they ripped into him… Then suddenly silence and grunting from the neighbors struggling to pry the Corsos off. Somehow little shithead survived.

My dog chased an industrial lawnmower, thing had spinning open blades on the back

A friend was on house arrest, staying in a guest bedroom at his uncle’s house. He had a small black cat with white paws named Psyche, but the rule was Psyche had to stay in his room.

One day Psyche got out and ran down two flights of stairs to the basement. I went down for him to get her and bring her back up. I coaxed her toward me, then I scruffed her and was holding her scruff (also supporting under her) tightly as I walked back upstairs.

I thought to myself “I’m being too hard on this cat” and I relaxed the grip I had on her scruff just slightly. She saw this as weakness and immediately went into battle mode. The moment I relaxed my grip slightly, she took one swipe at my other hand with her paw and then bolted when I dropped her.

The thing that terrified me was this: her paw went through my hand like an scoop through ice cream. All the claws worked as one to just scoop a little chunk of flesh out of the pad of my hand. Like, it was a 3D wound.

It was the first time I understood what a cat’s paw is. Those individual claws aren’t the weapon. The paw is the weapon. And when a cat’s paw is swiping, my flesh is like whipped cream in its path.

Raven opened my cage and ate my pet parakeet

Some friends provoked a massive swarm of bees near their home in response to a home invasion. I'm not complaining about the outcome, but let's just say if we lived in the Harry Potter universe, that would've been the first day I could see thestrals.

A large dog rip my cousins pomeranian to pieces

Elk in road. No lights, no moon, no other cars headlights. Like a big furry wall just showed up in my headlights. I chose a direction to swerve and now I'm not allowed to test my luck ever again.

A moose just stood there being a moose. Moose are terrifying.

The actual scariest stuff pretty much boils down to aggressive dogs being aggressive dogs.

For example: I saw a woman lose control of her pit-mix. The dog rushed over to one of our neighbors, unprovoked, and immediately latched on to her leg and started thrashing it. The dog's owner was freaking out screeching which seemed to agitate the dog rather than dissuade it from attacking. There was so much blood, but I think the only long term physical damage was scars. However, I only ever saw the victim once or twice after that, she stopped going out on walks after that event.

If you're willing to stretch the definition of scariest and seen:

Deer are super annoying sometimes. One of their behaviors is that they make a super loud snort-whistle noise when alarmed. So if you're outside and unaware of their presence, and especially if you're not expecting a super loud and almost alien-like snort-whistle coming from the woods right next to you, there's a good chance it's going to startle the crap out of you.

Orcas can beach themselves to catch seals...

My Lab slipped out her collar and ran straight into traffic and without even considering risks I bolted after her. Sun just fell and we got lucky cuz incoming car saw me and/or her and stopped with hazard lights blinking that stopped both lanes. She couldn't continue because of that and ran off the eroad into someone's backyard that was fenced. Lucky about that too cuz idk that I could have followed her.

We has just adopted her from Craigslist a couple days prior and she was the most nervous wreck I've ever seen a 7yo dog. She's a helluva lot better a safety sense with women and wouldn't come out of that backyard to me because she flipped on men in general. She relatively does well with me if I maintain a good manner when approaching her and she's gain a good sense of familiarity with me since.

My wife came to after a minute and so I walked away from the area and she came to my wife. Had to cuz I dropped her leash when I took off chasing her. Didn't mean to but I couldn't stop and grab it again. So I while she sat with her I went back to get it and even the house's owner came out and asked if he could help but had to be told about the nerve wreck reference to men so he just went back inside. All this while my other lab was behaving fantastically with my wife and then back to the pick up with me.

Yeah. We got two labs in the city. I know. They're both really good bar whatever happened to her before. It's difficult but she is slowly healing from whatever. This was less than two weeks ago so we'll see how it goes. Now that we got a harness for her we are back to walks around town with them again and she loves it despite having to check on everyone every time everywhere at every moment.