Your worst brush with mutha nature
tabira
856 Posts
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tabira
856 Posts
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Slightly off topic and in before this thread turns into a collection of images best suited for an H R Giger scrapbook, but I'm currently getting freaked out by the forming of a collective (is the correct term a clutter?) of cats in my back garden.
It started off with one neighbour's cat starting to chill on our lawn everyday watching us with curiosity. The next day I wandered down in the morning to see a second one hanging about on the fence about a metre behind the first one. Came down two days later and a third cat had joined the group, all chilling, all staring at me with that unwavering intensity and disdain that cats do so well as I wander round our kitchen. I know that they're not from the same home as they meet up from different directions at the beginning of the day.
I've always bigged up my furry tailed friends but this is starting to feel like a feline version of Birds and suspect it's only a matter of time until they attempt a takeover.
Tonight I am flying into OKC to see family and there is a huge chance of another tornado outbreak...
squeeze thighs alert.
Foolishly yanking a 5 foot octopus out of the sand in 12 feet of water in Panama.
Many hurricanes and floods in Louisiana.
Many, many rattlesnake scares in Louisiana.
Being surprised by a school of porpoises suddenly popping out of the water all around me while surfing in California.
Several earthquakes in California.
Jellyfish sting in Texas.
The panamanian dude arcellio who grew up in the area starts losing his mind, screaming at me saying it was the most poisonous spider in the rainforest. We kill it with roach spray. I find out now, they are not even poisonous at all and some people keep them as pets, but how freaky looking is this!?
Jay
In the mid-70???s a buddy and I hitch-hiked from NY down to a place called Loft Mountain in Virginia. Being city boys we laughed at the sign at the entrance to the campgrounds that read ???Beware Of Bears?????????There can???t be any bears here??? we thought..???They wouldn???t let us camp here if there were???. We set up camp and cooked dinner and admittedly didn???t clean up after ourselves the way we should have. At dusk our camp started to be infiltrated by skunks and raccoons and the elderly couple in the Winnebago at the campsite next to ours suggested we clean up our mess so it didn???t attract any bears. At that moment we started to take this bear stuff seriously and cleaned up???.we also hung our backpacks up in a tree as suggested on the Bear Warning Sign we had laughed at earlier.
We hit the sack at about 11:00 and at about 11:15 we heard footsteps that sounded like a human walk right by our tent. Then we heard some pig-like snorts and looked outside just in time to see a bear grab my buddy???s backpack from the tree and run down the hill. I got out of the tent, woke up the elderly neighbors and asked them if I could put my backpack in their trailer. I went back to the tent in which my buddy Ray was utterly freaked out and laid back down. Within about 10 minutes the bear was back, snorting and pacing back and forth. Ray was very quietly trying to tell me that he was scared because he had a big chunk of hash in his backpack and was afraid that if the bear ate it he would freak out and kill us. We literally laid there and watched this bear pace until sun-up when he left.
When we were sure he was gone we got out of the tent and went to look for Ray???s backpack???..we found it about 30 yards down a hill and it was covered in bear saliva???.gooey sticky shit coated the entire thing. The bear had removed two things from the backpack???a small container of Tang orange drink which he has sucked out of its container and a small container of bouillon cubes in which the chunk of hash was hidden???it was still there. The neighbor couple came out and gave me my backpack and informed us we had to report the bear sighting to the Ranger. You could tell they were pretty disgusted with us ???city folk???.
We went to the Ranger Station and you could tell they were about to have some fun at our expense. They made us sit down and they brought out a very large photo album that contained photos of all the bear attacks they had at that campground over the years. Pop-up campers that had been shredded by bears who wanted what was inside. Coolers smashed on rocks, a convertible car that had been destroyed. The last page had photos of a tent that a bear had gotten into and killed the two young ladies sleeping inside. It scared the shit out of us. The rest of the day we were minor celebrities at the campground??????There are those two idiots that attracted the bears?????????yep, that was us.
We went to the camp store and called two friends in NY to tell them about our ordeal???..without hesitation they said ???We???re on our way down, we want to see bears???. In the meantime we started to come up with ideas on how to prevent this from happening again. We bought a big roll of twine and proceeded to string it from every part of our tent to all of the surrounding trees. When we were done we had this large spider web-like contraption completely surrounding our tent. The idea was that if a bear got anywhere near our tent he would hit the ropes and wake us up. That night we hung out with a few guys that were there from Wisconsin. We drank grain alcohol & Kool-Aid, snorted liquid Amyl Nitrate and smoked that chunk of hash. On more than one occasion that night we were the brunt of a bear joke.
The next day our two friends showed up. One of them who was always a little crazy went to the Camp Store and bought a big bottle of chocolate syrup. That evening he poured the contents all across the top of the picnic table in our campground and set up a chair about 30 feet away where he sat waiting for a bear to show up. By 3:00AM he gave up and came into the tent with the three of us to sleep. About 20 minutes later the tent was jolted???..and then again even harder as the ropes were doing their job. Now all four of us are sitting up, scared shitless, and all of a sudden there is a loud roar and the top of our tent is slammed. One of my buddy???s is yelling ???LEAVE US ALONE??? as if a bear will understand that and leave us alone. We then hear laughter from outside and climb out of the tent to find our new friends from Wisconsin laughing their asses off at us???.something they would soon regret.
We had planned a hike the next day after lunch with the dudes from Wisconsin. We decided that two of us would stay behind under the guise of needing to catch up on sleep and the two that were going on the hike were instructed to stay out as late as possible. My and the crazy chocolate syrup guy stayed behind, bought a 2-lb bag of sugar from the Camp Store and proceeded to open it and spread it across the floor of the Wisconsin boys tent which we left open. When they arrived back at around dusk we waited for them to go to their campsite and when they arrived we heard them scream. When they went to go into their tent they found it inhabited by a skunk, and he squirted them???..good. They decided they had to sleep under the stars that night as their tent stunk too bad. We told them to be on the lookout for bears???and had the last laugh.
the rain was coming down so hard and i was shook so i made my way back and low and behold, lightning struck i don't know how far from myself, but enough to find myself experiencing a big flash and a being blasted onto the floor with great force. after this i was double shook!
Well, at least I have advance warning of what tonight's nightmare is going to be and can plan accordingly.
DAMN, NATURE, YOU SCARY!
These look disgusting...
There's this island on the coast of Guinea that has a former slave prison that later got turned into an insane asylum before serving as a concentration camp for political prisoners under the Sekou Toure regime until finally becoming deserted by the mid 80s and ever since being reclaimed by the tropical forest. The place is already as spooky as it gets but when I poke my head into one of the rooms, I see this:
Turned out to be dead already.
One day on the Conakry Freetown highway, which for over 60 miles is nothing but a pot hole riddled dirtroad, I see this snake and walk up close to snap a picture:
I later learn that this was a spitting cobra that can eject poison into your eyes from 2-3 yards distance which can lead to permanent blindness if left untreated. Needless to say that there's no way to get treatment in the middle of the jungle with half a day to the next hospital.
This fucker was the size of my thumb and bit me in my little toe when I stepped into him on my way from the terrace to get a fresh beer from the kitchen. It was pitch black, I felt somthing biting me and holding onto my foot, I kicked and it clattered against the wall, leaving two bleeding holes in my toe.
There were also several large scorpions and dangerous looking spiders running around the living room floor at various times but I don't think I was ever met with anything life threatening except possibly that cobra. Who knows what animals I passed by when hiking forests, swimming waterfalls and mangrove rivers though... I was always thinking "what kind of animals might I be sharing this water with..." oh yeah and once I chased a gang of baboons through the bush in an unsuccessful attempt to snap a picture. Those can really fuck you up I was later told by the locals and should never be approached alone.
too-close-for-comfort rhino and tiger encounters in nepal.
too-close-for-comfort elephant encounter in malawi.
lots of scary bug encounters in asia and s america.
lots of skin/stomach parasites, fungi, worms over the years.
lots of earthquakes.
Copperheads
Rattlesnakes
Black Bears
Scorpions
Close with bites:
Mosquito
Horse flies on Assateague Island and Chincoteague
Spiders
Close but no falling debris:
Earthquake
edges of tornadoes and hurricanes
Far but falling debris:
Volcano eruption
The second day, we wake up hungover of course, cook some breakfast, and have a morning smoke along with some hair of the dog. We get back on the river and almost immediately the rapids start picking up. That day was already planned to be a half day on the river, but it was brutal from the start. Apart from being hungover, we hit tons of rough parts, and everyone gets tossed out of their raft at some point or another (no one had the day before, not even close). Anyway, we're all still having a good time, and waiting to see who the next person to get tossed out of their raft will be. We had a system of letting those of us ahead know to catch the floating back-pack coming down the river.
Right near the spot where we're going to pull out of the river and pack it up, there were three rapids in succession, left, right, left. I get over the first two, and then the third gets me. I go under, and then when my head pops up, I get pulled right back under and flipped. When I come back up, I try to reach for something, and get pulled right back under. I was caught up in the eddy, and did not have enough experience to know that if I balled up I would get spit back out, so I kept trying to reach for something, and kept getting pulled under. I inhaled quite a bit of water, and what seemed to go on forever, but was probably for 20-30 seconds, I thought I was going to drown because I could not catch my breath, had taken in water, and kept getting pulled under over and over. I totally thought I was going to die, and for a second went kind of limp. At that moment, the water spit me out back into the flow of the river. The rapid had ripped off my shorts, so I was floating down with my junk hanging out, coughing up a shit ton of water.
That was scary as shit, but then a few days later I start getting sick and what felt like a pulled muscle behind my right shoulder. To keep this from getting any longer, it turns out I had caught pneumonia, which the doc gave me antibiotics for, but what did not show up on the x-ray was that I had a pretty big abscess behind my right lung which was formed from inhaling so much water. When they finally caught that, it was when I went in after a night that I could not even lie down, or breathe deeply, or eat, because there was so much pain if I moved much (turns out the abscess was rubbing against nerves in my back). So I had to immediately check into the hospital, and had chest surgery to remove the abscess and had tubes coming out of my right lung for almost a week. I was in the hospital for 8 days, and shared a room with an old-timer who had heart surgery and got out before me! That whole thing was my second brush with death but from the same incident.
Yesterday when I was petting the ponies along this trail that Harley D and I walk I got shocked in the heart by the damn electrical fence.
I had always wonder if it was really on, and how hard of an electrocution it gave off, and found out. Sure enough I was actually petting the baby horse and it shocked her, too.
Along the same trail, about a month ago, I accidentally grazed a snake while I was looking at a duck and the snake snapped, biting the bottom of my shoe.
Again, very shockIng but not too bad.
best thing i have read in ages. hahaha!
Closest to shark bait was when I got swept out to sea whilst swimming at Bondi. I didn't see the warning flags on the beach for whatever reason (probably boobie-R) and got in some riptide whilst swimming what I thought was a straight line across the bay.
When I looked up to swim back, I was a distance out, the water was black deep, the waves were big and I was exhausted. I was panicking a bit, because I was getting pulled further and further back on every wave. Convinced myself DO NOT PANIC. YOU CAN DO THIS. So it was hammer for 10 seconds into the wave, chill as it pulled 3/4 of that back, breathe, repeat... Must have took me well over an hour to claw my way back.
Raas boobie dem.
Here I thought my scorpion encounters in AZ were gonna be heavy.
What a great story... thanx for telling it.
Yeah, I thought you only got them in the deep countryside, but they are to be found in Tokyo too in the summer months (sorry Matt, but I'm sure you'll be safe from the wee buggers in your penthouse crib ;) )
A couple of years ago I was house sitting a place and just around about this time of year these cute little critters that were all wispy legs and looked like they belonged underwater in a Jean Painleve film started running up and down the walls. My how we laughed as the cat went crazy trying to catch them.
Then they disappeared for about three weeks. And we forgot about them.
Now I know what baby mukade look like and will terminate with extreme prejudice, since as someone already noted they are almost impossible to kill when adult.
Otherwise, yeah I've had my fair share of scares. One that stands out was in Fiji many years ago. I was staying on a small "party" island where you simply rocked up, paid your money and partied nonstop until you could take no more. Beer, food and fresh water were brought by boat twice or three times a week but otherwise it was completely isolated. You could walk around the whole island in an hour ... pristine beaches, great snorkelling, rapture of the deep yadda yadda.
Anyway, when it came time to leave about six of us got into a boat designed for four and headed out into the open ocean to get back to the main island and a flight onwards. After about 30 minutes we were out of sight of the island we'd left and there was no land to be seen. Not long after we notice a buildup of cloud on the horizon, which soon turns into a jet black wall of approaching storm. And the boat turns straight towards it. The temperature dropped from a balmy 28-30C to what felt like 10 and my ears were ringing from the shift in air pressure as we headed into the storm. I seriously thought we were goners, but everyone else was staying calm so being young and reckless I thought wtf, no sense in panicking and sure enough we were out the other side in about 20 minutes.
Still the longest 20 minutes of my life, though.
best thing is don't fight the current....your over an hour encounter could have been reduced drastically by just using the current and swimming across, indirectly.
that said, I had a similar experience at Bilgola beach >.< some surfer dude came to my aid and quickly sorted me out.....shit is scary!
i found out yesterday that it's a case of stage 2 west nile virus. there are 3 stages apparently, the first you'd never know you had, the second feels like you're going to die, the third you DO die.
so there's that.
Get well soon. Serious stuff.