Posted by David Sherman on Monday, October 23, 2006 at 6:40PM :
In Reply to: Re: OTS but fun posted by Russ/Wyo on Monday, October 23, 2006 at 4:46PM :
Unless they want to eat you, wild animals always give plenty of warning before they attack. They'll snarl and snort and paw the ground and shake their horns and puff themselves up and generally try to look as mean as possible. Animals know that actually getting in a fight is very risky. Animals can't just go to the hospital and get patched up and recuperate if they get hurt. Even a minor injury is likely to kill a wild animal through infection or hunger or through another predator or competitor taking advantage of their temporary weakness. They'll always bluff and try to show off whatever natural weapons they have, but unless you force the fight on them, they're unlikely to actually engage. That assumes, of course, that you're not so stupid as to try to walk up and punch a moose or a bear in the nose.
If they want to eat you, however, you'll never even know the cougar has been watching you until it sinks its teeth into the back of your neck, separating your cervical vertebrae and paralyzing you so that it can feed on you at leisure. The cougar doesn't care if you're conscious while it's eating you (or letting its young eat you). So long as you can't thrash around, you can take as long as you want to die. I know a man who got jumped by a cougar and survived, but only because he heard it just as it started to jump at him.