When you walk around in the bushes a lot, you tend to encounter wildlife. Mostly it is deer, moose, porcupines, and skunks. I’ve run into black bears a few times, but they were invariably running away. I’ve only had three encounters with wildlife that were potentially dangerous. I was struck by a coral snake in Florida, but it was a small one and he didn’t penetrate the skin of my calf because coral snakes are elapids, which are rear-fanged. (Old herpetologist joke: you can tell the field men from the museum men by counting their fingers.)
In the Northern Rockies one morning I was walking across a meadow from our camp to get water at a nearby stream and I heard a snuffling sound. I looked up and there was a wolverine staring at me about twenty yards away. Wolverines have been known to claw through 2” oak doors to get at food and they are also known for being remarkably ill-tempered with no inherent fear of Man. We looked at each other awhile until he decided he wasn’t hungry and moved off.
My most amusing encounter was on the job in Venezuela. There was an old pit where somebody had tried to find an ore vein. It was basically a cylinder about 10 feet deep and six feet in diameter. One of the other gringo geologists managed to drop his prospector’s pick into the hole. He didn’t want to leave it, so we put a couple of logs across the pit and used two of our belts to lower him down into the pit. The belts left him about 2’ short of the bottom. So he dropped the last two feet. When he hit the floor, which was covered with plant debris, the whole floor came alive with dozens of frogs, which had fallen into the pit, that started jumping up and down. These particular frogs were vibrant green and yellow, which identified them as quite poisonous; they exuded a neurotoxin from their skin that could be absorbed by your skin. The neurotoxin was popular with the local headhunters. It probably also occurred to the guy that a fer de lance, a popular South American viper, may have fallen into the pit as well.
The guy still leaned over and grabbed his pick from among the bouncing frogs, because he was a crazy gringo geologist. Then he sprang up the hole to grab the belt with a leap that probably would have set an Olympic record. He was so quick, he almost pulled us into the pit with him. However, he only grabbed the belt with one hand because he had the pick in the other and was trying to put it back in his belt holster as we pulled him up. As I mentioned, geologists are crazy.
I had another encounter with local fauna, but it wasn’t wild. I don’t get on well with dogs; I’ve been bitten three times. So when a dog comes running up in a threatening manner, I will go for him if he gets too close. One day I was walking down the side of a rural road somewhere down South. This large mutt comes running out of the yard at me growling. I was carrying a hard-rock pick, which has a hammer on one side and a tetragonal point on the other side. When the dog got too close, I popped him on the top of the head with the pointy end. He dropped like one of those critters in a cartoon with his legs spread out to the sides. The owner runs out of the house and starts yelling at me for killing his dog. I pointed out that I was on the road and the damn dog should have been on a leash or fenced. The discussion went on a bit until the guy suddenly realized I was still holding a bloody prospector’s pick in my hand. So he picked up his dog and went back inside while I went on my way before he could find his gun.