Americans Fighting Animals

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spittingimage spittingimage I don't really know how to put the smell of a skunk's defensive spray into words, but it's very bad. I guess rotted cabbage is the closest smell I can think of. It's also difficult to get off of you.
Yeah, it's the stench of "dead things, damned things" to steal a line from Frank Miller. The smell is so intense that, when a skunk sprays near my house on a warm summer evening, the smell wafting through the open windows will wake me up and keep me from sleeping.
 
I have to wonder if some of these people have ever seen these animals up close. Gorilla, Elephant, Grizzly? I'm going to put those in the not a chance category, even if you were somehow able to prevent them from killing you, how are you going to hurt them? Get them in a head lock and choke them, great, until you have 800lbs of grizzly roll over on you, gorilla or elephant will just reach back and pop your head off.

How bad do skunks smell? They're not a thing in my country, so I've never experienced one personally. The internet has shown me that they squeak adorably and eat grapes, but the internet may have a pro-skunk bias.

It is literally eye watering and can make it hard to breathe in a heavy concentration, kind of like mild pepper spray.

I've had a few close encounters with skunks. Our dumb dog got into a tangle with a skunk under our bedroom window during the summer so the windows were open. It was so overpowering that it woke us up and we had to bail out of the room choking and gagging. We ended up sleeping in the living room for two days. Even with multiple baths with soaps made to cut the skunk spray he spent 2 weeks outside, he reeked too bad to let him in the house. Dipshit got into it with a skunk again a few weeks later, and we went through it all again, but thankfully not under our window the second time around.

The other time was in the house. Like rats skunks can fit through holes much smaller than they should be able too. One is they have a lot of hair which makes them look bigger than they are, but they are also very narrow and pointy kind of like a rat so they can squeeze through holes. Well we had one get under the house, and get into the kitchen. It was under the dishwasher and my wife could hear it under there. Thinking it was a mouse (we had a serious mouse problem in that house) she slapped the side of the dishwasher to scare it away. She could hear it stomp its little feet which is what skunks do to as a warning, she realized she had made a terrible mistake and ran just before it made the kitchen uninhabitable. Luckily everything involved was a sealed surface, porcelain covered steel, and linoleum mostly so cleaning up was much easier than getting the smell off the dog.

Even at a distance it is pretty potent.
 
I used to live where skunks were pretty common. They'd get run over by cars at night fairly regularly. Even driving by at 50mph the stench would waft in and make the car trip suck for a while.


My great grandmother was apparently a little crazy and had a family of them living under her house. She treated them like pets which I would advise against.
 
Screw people who think they can fight a bear, who on earth thinks they can kill an elephant? Like I'm not even sure how to kill one without a weapon. Everything else you could probably strangle, but an elephant?
And you'd better get it right first time, because elephants don't forget and they don't forgive.

Mess up and one day you'll be minding your business, posting on your favourite geese hatred slash food appreciation forum, and BAM suddenly an elephant's gonna show up and that's it for you.
 
I hope nobody was expecting a thread with this title to go by without somebody posting some men's adventure magazine covers:
A spokesman for the Gorillas has invited 8% of the USA to "fuck about and find out".
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A rat is a fantastic scavenger / survivalist, able to take advantage of animals supposedly higher up the food chain than them and the smallest of opportunities. They're incredibly smart and cunning, possessing metacognition (The ability to think about thoughts), indirectly responsible for some of the greatest losses of human life ever, and directly responsible for wiping out many, many other species when they've been introduced to new environments.
MAN'S LIFE, May 1956. Cover by Wil Hulsey (my copy)-8x6.jpg

And just because it's my favorite:

Cannibal Crabs.jpg
 
I messed with an angry cat one time... it was like holding a power saw that suddenly turned on. Maybe I could have beat it to death, or strangled it... but I would have lost a good bit of blood in the process. As it was I just let go of it, dropped it... but still got multiple puncture wounds.
 
....My great grandmother was apparently a little crazy and had a family of them living under her house. She treated them like pets which I would advise against.
You can live with them. I have one who is very mellow who is often around. Walked in on him/her in the garage once, not more than a meter away. Very calmly just sauntered out.

It doesn't freak when my dog notices it, but then again do not let him get close. My dog reacts to it like a interesting smelling cat, like a friend to play with, unlike raccoons and possums which he sees as prey/threats. It's the coyotes and swans that really get his hackles up.
 
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And you'd better get it right first time, because elephants don't forget and they don't forgive.

Mess up and one day you'll be minding your business, posting on your favourite geese hatred slash food appreciation forum, and BAM suddenly an elephant's gonna show up and that's it for you.
Interestingly happened in Solo and Jogja, my favourite part of Indonesia and both of which still have royal families (Republic of Indonesia ... ?) Most of the palace in Solo is open to tourists, and I have been there, although I don't think they keep tigers or elephants there anymore.

I think Sumatra still has wild tigers and elephants, though.
 
And you'd better get it right first time, because elephants don't forget and they don't forgive.

Mess up and one day you'll be minding your business, posting on your favourite geese hatred slash food appreciation forum, and BAM suddenly an elephant's gonna show up and that's it for you.

In high school my Physiology teacher had spent several years working in Africa. He talked about witnessing a rogue bull elephant killing someone. The elephant knocked the man down and stepped on him just hard enough to pin him down then ripped his arms and legs off with his trunk before crushing him. A game warden shot and killed the elephant before it came at others in the group but not in time for the one guy. He said he heard about similar happening other times, but that was the only attack he personally witnessed.

That story gave me a lot of respect for elephants. They are not just big, but they get mean when they get angry.

Hippos are the same, people think they are just these big, slow and peaceful animals, but hippos are mean. Allegedly one of the most dangerous animals in Africa. Clearly Hippos have good marketing people.
 
In high school my Physiology teacher had spent several years working in Africa. He talked about witnessing a rogue bull elephant killing someone. The elephant knocked the man down and stepped on him just hard enough to pin him down then ripped his arms and legs off with his trunk before crushing him. A game warden shot and killed the elephant before it came at others in the group but not in time for the one guy. He said he heard about similar happening other times, but that was the only attack he personally witnessed.

That story gave me a lot of respect for elephants. They are not just big, but they get mean when they get angry.
It's the clear intelligence there that gets me; big predators will just kill you dead, because they don't want to risk getting injured. But that elephant clearly knew that it had the upper hand (So to speak) and exactly what to do with it, it wanted the guy to suffer. Do not fuck with any animal that can just casually pop your limbs off.
 
Based on a news story that is getting a lot of play recently, at least one 17-year-old in California is capable of pushing a mother bear off a wall to save the family dogs. Now, if the dogs hadn’t started the ruckus, there wouldn’t have been a problem to begin with, but still...
 
Based on a news story that is getting a lot of play recently, at least one 17-year-old in California is capable of pushing a mother bear off a wall to save the family dogs. Now, if the dogs hadn’t started the ruckus, there wouldn’t have been a problem to begin with, but still...
Whatdayaknow? Americans really can fight a bear and win. I guess we're not as crazy as we thought....
 
Yeah, it's the stench of "dead things, damned things" to steal a line from Frank Miller. The smell is so intense that, when a skunk sprays near my house on a warm summer evening, the smell wafting through the open windows will wake me up and keep me from sleeping.
Mercaptans are used as an additive for natural gas in trace amounts as the smell is perceptible in very low concentrations. See also Thioacetone.
 
How bad do skunks smell? They're not a thing in my country, so I've never experienced one personally. The internet has shown me that they squeak adorably and eat grapes, but the internet may have a pro-skunk bias.
Never smelled the spray but we have them around here. A common pest in rural areas, the bane of anyone who raises chickens.
I hope nobody was expecting a thread with this title to go by without somebody posting some men's adventure magazine covers:

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And just because it's my favorite:

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These had the best covers. I actually used this one as a teaser for my Day After Ragnarok game:
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I messed with an angry cat one time... it was like holding a power saw that suddenly turned on. Maybe I could have beat it to death, or strangled it... but I would have lost a good bit of blood in the process. As it was I just let go of it, dropped it... but still got multiple puncture wounds.
Another case of “TSR D&D got it right.” Screw you, zero-level humans.
 
Yeah, but if you didn’t go drunkenly chasing a dingo, wouldn’t you lose your Australian citizenship?
It doesn't have to be a dingo - 'roos and emus are also considered acceptable.
Now I have a mental image of Meryl Streep saying "A dingo ate my fish - it was this big!"
 
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Rats are pretty astounding. We are lucky, as a species, that they aren't aggressive, not the least because they outnumber us, by very conservative estimates, 1000:1. Some experts belief that it is closer to 10,000:1.
So WH40k is a dystopia because of the Skavens:grin:?
 
I'm more interested in the people that thought they can kill a king cobra.

I think the unarmed part is the only part that makes that hard. I've seen enough farmers kill poisonous snakes with a gardening hoe to know that with just a little bit of tools, it's pretty easy.

That said, you could probably win barehanded... you may not survive without immediate medical attention but you could quite possibly kill it first.
 
I think the unarmed part is the only part that makes that hard. I've seen enough farmers kill poisonous snakes with a gardening hoe to know that with just a little bit of tools, it's pretty easy.

That said, you could probably win barehanded... you may not survive without immediate medical attention but you could quite possibly kill it first.
Oh, you're right. For some reason, I'd assumed that "winning" would include "surviving"!
Silly me, of course that's not the case with some badasses:grin:!

And yes, it's the barehanded part that gives me pause when thinking of taking on a cobra:shade:.
 
Oh, you're right. For some reason, I'd assumed that "winning" would include "surviving"!
Silly me, of course that's not the case with some badasses:grin:!

And yes, it's the barehanded part that gives me pause when thinking of taking on a cobra:shade:.
Am I remembering right that cobras have curved fangs and a very flat palm significantly reduce the likelihood they can bite your hand and inject venom?
 
Am I remembering right that cobras have curved fangs and a very flat palm significantly reduce the likelihood they can bite your hand and inject venom?
I have no idea, but during the 2019 horny cobra season I don't think I would have hung around to find out.
 
Am I remembering right that cobras have curved fangs and a very flat palm significantly reduce the likelihood they can bite your hand and inject venom?
All the images of cobras I've seen had curved fangs. Whether a flat palm would reduce the likelihood of penetration, I can't say, but personally, I doubt it.
The shape is the same as that of a claw, after all.
 
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