Basically I am referring to creatures that look pretty harmless at first glance, but then make the person want to run for their lives as bear cubs for instance can look pretty friendly, but their parents will beat someone up if the person gets too friendly with said cubs.


49 comments

  1. After my experience yesterday morning at a cemetery, I’m going to say turkeys.

    They approached me, started to gather around me, chased me at full speed and I ran for my life, I got into my car, they surrounded my car and pecked at it, and then chased after the car at full speed.

    They were like little velociraptors and it was the first time in life being chased by a wild animal.

    I have a new perspective on turkeys.

  6. Moose. They’re kind of elusive up here. You’ll see them off in the distance or something. You see one close up and realize just how big they are and it quickly goes from “oh what a neat animal to see at a distance” to existential dread.

    Oh and ticks. Fuck those things. Seemingly small and innocuous pains in the ass but then someone gets Lyme or Lepto.

    I guess the creatures that scare me the most might be bacteria actually.

  12. Bears, swans, geese, bobcats, mountain lions, snakes… all of these are dangerous and you should keep your distance.

  14. I see Black bears a lot and they are easy to shoo away. Plus they are cute. I’ve run into plenty of Alligators on hikes, not that scary.

    Even though I know 99.9999 shark encounters are safe, I kinda forgot all about that when I came VERY face to face with one in Key West. She was about a 7 foot Black tip shark just coming RIGHT towards me. She just swam around me but it one time that I was REALLY afraid. I was about a 8 minute swim to the boat and I knew the moment had passed but I didn’t even feel like going back in the water. Walking around Key West there were a zillion shops with shark t-shirts. I really got a little zap of flashback to that fear just walking around looking at all the shark imagery.

  15. Ever had a herd of cattle just stare at you while chewing their cud.

  23. Ticks and fishercats.

    We don’t have wolves where I live or cougars, but we have bears and bobcats, a couple poisonous snakes, coyotes and coyote wolf hybrids but fishers scare me the most. It would be rare to run into one though.

    Deer ticks are more daily threat to life.

  24. Spiders, because I never know which ones hiding in the wood pile are trying to kill me…

  26. What scares me the most is rabies, so… any mammal behaving strangely, but particularly bats.

  29. Copperheads.

    Their bite is rarely deadly, but it hurts like nothing else, and they are incredibly camouflaged against leaf litter on the forest floor.

  30. Mountain lions. I’ve never seen one but I don’t live far from the mountains. There were sightings by where I work

  31. Deer, actually. They cause SO MANY road accidents around the country. We have to be so careful, especially at night because of the possibility of hitting one. It can wreck your car and cause a serious accident.

  33. Roosters. Every person who’s ever lived near rooster has a childhood tale of terror that they can tell about being chased.

  35. Ticks and snakes. 

    Both are real dangers in the summer time here. 

    As a parent of wild exploring kids they definitely get a tick check when they come in. 

  36. “Fear The Deer” doesn’t just mean it’s basketball season in Milwaukee. An actual stampeding white tail buck is scary as hell. Ask anyone whose driven on the backroads in the Upper Midwest.

  37. Rattlesnakes.  They’re damn near invisible and they’re everywhere.  Those pictures where they slit skin to relieve pressure and prevent the skin from splitting…  Ugh

  38. “Chiggers” aka “scrub itch mites.” [These things](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trombicula)

    I know how to deter and spray bears and mountain lions. I know how to avoid alligators and cottonmouths. I know how to identify a brown recluse, shake my boots out, and check myself for ticks. 

    You never see chiggers coming though, and you can’t deter them entirely unless you want to bug spray all up in your bits. You brush the wrong overgrowth or sit down on the wrong patch of grass for just a few minutes and you wake up in the middle of the night with your groin on fire.

    So much worse than mosquito bites. It’s awful. 

  46. I’m good with all critters, like any snakes, racoons, mice, black bears, strange insects, foxes, deer, even gators don’t phase me… I grew up in the country, where you know how to deal with critters or how to get out of there way.

    I thought I was good with bats… I was house sitting an old Victorian home and woke up to a bat fluttering around my room. I knew well enough to leave the room and shove a towel under the door. I went to sleep in a separate bedroom and woke up to a very weak/dehydrated bat on my arm. It was so cute, so I took a picture with it clinging to my arm. Then I carefully wrapped it in a towel and released it outside. I sent the picture to the homeowner and they were like GET A RABIES SHOT IMMEDIATELY.

    I immediately drove myself to a hospital. I’m glad I did.

    Now bats scare me.

  47. Tarantula Hawk

    I lived in Tucson, AZ for eight years and these things were everywhere I didn’t find out what they were until the last year I was there – thank god.

    “Tarantula hawk wasps are relatively docile and rarely sting without provocation. However, the sting—particularly that of P. grossa—is among the most painful of all insects, though the intense pain only lasts about five minutes.[10] One researcher described the pain as “…immediate, excruciating, unrelenting pain that simply shuts down one’s ability to do anything, except scream. Mental discipline simply does not work in these situations.”[7] In terms of scale, the wasp’s sting is rated near the top of the Schmidt sting pain index, second only to that of the bullet ant, and is described by Schmidt as “blinding, fierce[, and] shockingly electric”.[2] “

    [Tarantula Hawk](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarantula_hawk)

  48. Ticks, wasps, and Canadian geese. Oh and skunks but only because I’ve been sprayed before and it blows. I wouldn’t say I’m scared of any of these, just weary. I have an encounters with rattlesnakes and mountain lions and it wasn’t really a big deal.

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