Peculiar Animal Behaviors

**AJE** · 01-26-2005, 01:33 PM

Remember John Candy in "The Great Outdoors"? It has a number of wildlife encounters which are funny to watch...but wouldn't be laughable if it happened to you.
Do you have any animal encounters you would like to share? Include animal stories from domestic, pets, or wildlife?

**AJE** · 01-26-2005, 01:34 PM

My family loved to tour the American west. As children we found ourselves experiencing the great outdoors and the sites of America from our home away from home: a tent. Unfortunately, unlike home, snacking on chips in bed is a dangerous thing to do. After a long, 16 hour road trip we hauled into Theodore Roosevelt National Park. just as the last rays of daylight was fading away. My sister, brother and I were really cranky from the loooooooooong car ride so we weren't thinking sanitation when we brought chips into the tent for a quick bedtime snack. In the middle of the night, mother nature decided we needed to empty our bladders. We woke Mom because the outhouse was quite a walk from the campsite and well, you know it was dark and we were little. The full moon gave us a great deal of light in which to trundle to the smelly building. Shortly after leaving the tent, however, we were shocked to discover we were being followed by a skunk. It was rather unsettling because no matter what speed we assumed, the skunk kept up with us. It was not without quite a bit of anxiety that we left the stinky outhouse because the skunk had really been acting strange and kept hanging around. It took about 20 minutes before it seemed to move on. As we tried to sneak back to the tent, the skunk again tailed us all the way. We unzipped the tent and dove inside in one fluid motion waking up dad in the process who then decided to leave the skunk alone rather than risk a stinky shower or a deadly bite. In bear country, Rangers tell campers not to take food and drinks into tents. We have expanded this precaution to anywhere skunks might reside.

**Kris10** · 01-26-2005, 10:23 PM

Why is it that critters always seem to add unwanted excitement to a camping trip? On our last venture in Summer 2004, we forgot to take a whole shopping bag of cookies into the pop-up at night. I woke up to horrible screaming and fighting, but I didn't dare go outside! In the morning we saw the damage raccoons inflicted on the cookie bag... it was nowhere to be found! The only trace was a scrap of wrapper from these lovely Chips Ahoy we'd picked for the trip, since we don't often have sweets at home. Sigh... I still miss those cookies, just thinking about them!

Lauri · 06-12-2005, 06:56 PM

This story is 30 years old but it is the only time I have sighted the state animal: a Badger. I was on my way to teach summer school at Kiel, WI driving on rural backroads when a commotion on the high end of the ditch caught my attention. Four black labs had a badger "cornered" and were trying to get the best of it. After leaving black skid marks on the pavement, I backed up to watch. It didn't take me long to decide that the dogs were losing. Yes, losing. The badger was a formidible opponent more than able to defend itself against the dogs. Not only was it terribly fast, but it had a set of teeth and claws that would have ripped the dogs apart if they made contact. Just before I had to leave to make it to work on time, I realized the badger seemed to be digging an escape hole at the same time it was keeping the dogs at bay.

**AJE** · 02-24-2006, 09:00 AM

NAIROBIÂ (AFP) - A baby hippopotamus that survived the tsunami waves on the Kenyan coast has formed a strong bond with a giant male century-old tortoise, in an animal facility in the port city of Mombassa, officials said.

The hippopotamus, nicknamed Owen and weighing about 300 kilograms (650 pounds), was swept down Sabaki River into the Indian Ocean, then forced back to shore when tsunami waves struck the Kenyan coast on December 26, before wildlife rangers rescued him.
It is incredible. A-less-than-a-year-old hippo has adopted a male tortoise, about a cent ury old, and the tortoise seems to be very happy with being a 'mother', ecologist Paula Kahumbu, who is in charge of Lafarge Park, told AFP.

"After it was swept and lost its mother, the hippo was traumatized. It had to look for something to be a surrogate mother. Fortunately , it landed on the tortoise and established a strong bond. They swim, eat and sleep together," the ecologist added. "The hippo follows the tortoise exactly the way it follows its mother. If somebody approaches the tortoise, the hippo becomes aggressive, as if protecting its biological mother," Kahumbu added.

"The hippo is a young baby, he was left at a very tender age and by nature, hippos are social animals that like to stay with their mothers for four years," he explained.

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.

This is a real story that shows me that our differences don't matter much when we need the comfort of another. We could all learn a lesson from these two creatures of God, Look beyond the differences and find a way to walk the path together.