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.

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.

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.

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.