What is most unusual critter you have encountered?

What is the strangest or most unusual critter you have seen in the outdoors?

I will start I saw this critter, a groundhog up in Shenandoah Valley. Peace and Love!!!

 

well i used to know an old guy who lived down by the river before they floated the price of gold and there was a ring tail pine marting that hung out with him as a kind of half-way ferrel pet.

i don't have much of a way of gauging straingeness. we had two kittens in our house who liked to work togather and kill rattle snakes and drag them home to us.

i've pretty much only met critters that were indiginous to where i was. seen a couple of felis concolor a bit closer then would be sensible to choose to. unintentionally on both their part and mine. and like most wild critters they did choose the better part of valour. i was unarmed both times, as i always am.

it's amazing to see how fast they actually travel. i had a bear bugging me all night one time, i guess i must have inadvertantly usurped his spot. i met a friendly wolf in a place where they were supposed to have been extinct for 20 years one time. i was just walking along and so was she, and we kind of walked besides each other for a little ways.

oh there's a couple of skunks that eat the cat food on mom's back porch. i guess i've met mostly the usual kinds of small fry. opposum, rackoon, porcupine. can't think of anything particularly unusual though. although like i said, i'm not too sure what exactly unusual would be. i suppose somebody's exotic pet from some other part of the world or off planet or something, but to the best of my knowledge i don't recall off hand doing so.

=^^=
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Strange or unusual would be things you are not accustom to seeing in the world you live in. Also while wife and I were in Shenandoah we saw a bear however I don't have a picture. I once was on a camping trip and we ended the last day in a family campground. People were eating around tables and I heard a comotion only to see a small child chasing a bear cub with a stick. Before long the bear cub looked back and saw what was actually chasing him and reversed direction. Later some grown-ups (I reckon some in his party) starting beating garbage can lids and scared the bear cub off. But I did not see the kid trying that trick again. Reckon he learned his lesson. Peace and Love!!!

 

back in 93 i was part of an expedition to study the reptiles and amphibians of costa rica .one night in the northwest part of the country i was searching the grounds with a flashlight close to a cliff that dropped close to 1000 ft .all of a sudden a tapir took off behind me squealing like a pig through the thickets of the dry tropical forest i was in .the noise and the squealing scared the chit out of me ..took a few days for my heart to settle down but i can say that i have seen a tapir in the wild.

 

Well, I don't usually post in this forum, just came across the title of this thread and figured it would be an interesting one...
I live in British Columbia (the Kootenays, to be more exact) and we see a lot of animals that most people these days consider "strange" - we've had deer, moose, elk, bears, etc. wander right through our property. Things like beavers, less-common birds, muskrats, groundhogs, coyotes, bobcats, etc. are normal signtings to us... most people that do a lot of hiking/camping have encountered critters like grizzlies, cougars, wolves, etc.

So, I'd say that the strangest thing I've ever seen in the wild was, by far, a wolverine. Where I live, it's not extremely populated. Where the wolverine was spotted was up on a summit, I was in a vehicle and it was late at night. Not a whole lot of traffic or anything later on at night up there. I've also heard from other people that have seen them (mostly on the summit or few other places, up in the mountains) and I definitely consider myself lucky to have seen one, even though I didn't get a very great look at it, it was definitely there, and VERY cool to see in the wild.

I guess a close second is the alligator lizard. They just found them a couple of years ago, and they seem to be a more and more common sight here, but so far, southern BC is the only place they're known to live. I saw one about 3 or 4 years ago near a river, and my husband caught one last Summer walking down a slightly-wooded trail to a swimming spot on Kootenay Lake. We put it in a small box (cracker box that we had) and were going to keep it in a tank and try to find out what it was, but the little fella escaped without any of us knowing how! They're definitely still kind-of a mystery.

 

I've been for sometimes where you are from DeathRowDisco and gotta say I love this place!

I use to live more in the south, down in Okanagan Valley, there was a nest of black widows in the toilet at the mountain we used to live. Everytime I had to go shit I was going paranoid about my ass getting bite!

 

Reading about the black widows made me think of one time down in Gorgia mountains, we were staying in a cabin. I went into the bathroom and looked in the shower and there was a scorpion. Later my wife and I were eating at the picnic table in the kitchen and another scorpion fell off from the underside of the table onto my bare leg. :uhoh2: Needless to say we moved to another cabin. This was close to Dahlonega.

 

My boyfriend, i actually did meet him while camping, but i couldn't think of anything else strange or unusual

 

My grandpa saw a peacock in is yard once. As far as we all knew, peacocks are native to Inda, which is a far way away from the US midwest! Haha! But we were thinkin it flew from the STL zoo or something...

 

I remember a story on CNN about a guy from the suburbs in NY that went on a 2-week trip to Canada to try to find a moose and saw nothing. When he got home, there was a moose on his front lawn along with police, reporters, etc.

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Great story Shaggie. Sounds like me when I was in NH for 11 weeks and never saw a moose. Seemed like all our friends did but we never did. Peace be with you!!!

 

haha! Thats one of the funniest things i have heard in a while.

 

Camping on the dikes of south Merrit Island, Florida when I was growing up, I woke up one morning with an otter in my tent. He wanted to play and hung around our camp all day.

 

I way wading around in the ocean in washingotn once andd found what looked like a 3 foot long water millipede in a tide pool. I put my shoes back on really fast

 

The strangest creature I have encountered is an insect called a "Vinegaroon". They look like a scorpion but they are not dangerous. I was on the road with my band travelling through a small town called Green River, Utah. We got a flat tire and pulled into a service station. I was walking around in bare feet and stepped on one of these mothers. It hurt!! I freaked cause I thought it was a scorpion. Odd insect, very painful bite.

 

That groundhog gets around...i saw it pop out from under a car at me...weird it being in the city eh.

 

a pack of killer raccoons! :eek!:

 

I've been seeing a really strange looking animal near my house. It looks like a squirrel mixed with a fox. It turns out that its a Fisher (in Alabama?). Since I've started carying my camera with me I haven't seen it.

 

I've saw an article in wich some scientists found out somekind of fox-bat in Amazonian Forest if I am right. Not quite sure about the location. You could see a picture. Really cool.

 

If you ever get a picture of this fisher I would like to see it. I think that is what I encounter up in New Hampshire years back and I didn't know what it was. Your description sounds like it though.