While working today I kept the TV on Animal Planet. They were playing some sort of marathon of themed shows, like Shark Week, but only for Sunday afternoon I guess. Today’s theme was ‘I should be head, but luckily I am not’, but not in the sensationalist Fox When Animals Attack shows of the last decade, but a more analytical view of events. They introduced the participants, gave same character background, described the day, re-enacted the events and throughout the re-enactment had interludes from experts describing why something happened. There were two that stuck out in my head.
- A woman attacked by a wolf while running in a campground
- and two boys who set sail in a rowboat for a day of fishing
The reason these two stuck out in my mind were because I have found myself in two similar situations. I never felt in any immediate danger, but looking back things could have turned out worse. Fortunately they did not.
When my brother and I were in high school we stayed at a cabin with our friend Kagan on Hartstein Island. Since we had run around the woods, dug for clams on the beach, went in the public swimming pool and played basketball we decided it was time to take the boat out on the water. When I say boat I really mean inflatable yellow raft. As soon as we launched the craft we decided to row to the other side of the channel to another island and come back. Great idea, right? …. right. As we worked our way across we noticed that we had gone aways down shore, but no big deal on the way back we just find ourselves roughly twice the distance down the shore as we crossed the channel to get back. This just meant a little more walking, but unfortunately they don’t build those plastic oars very well and of course, the one we had, broke at the base of the head. We now had an oar head and oar handle to paddle with. Keep our arms dry and paddle with the handle or get wet up to our elbows and paddle with the oar head? Neither were getting us very far, so we decided to take turns jumping in the water and pushing the raft back. Awesome idea and worked well at the beginning until we got cold and the entire raft wet jumping in and out of it. As it became later in the afternoon it got a little chilly which only worsened with the wetness. Eventually we made it back to shore, put the raft on our heads and walked down the road back to the cabin. Needless to say, this adventure could have turned out worse had the weather turned, the currents were stronger or the islands were further apart. Today’s show of the two boys who ended up at sea for more than 5 days reminded me of how fortunate we were in our situation. If I was to choose two people to find myself in a bad situation with it would be both Kagan and Eric.
The wolf attack story reminded me of a time when my borther, dad and I were camping in Canada while on a road trip. Late in the afternoon we had finished setting up camp and with two hours of light left my brother and I decided to explore the woods surrounding the camping area. There was a slight hill within eyesight of our site, so we decided it would be neat to see what was on the other side. We went up the hill and found ourselves in a small meadow bounded by the hill we ascended at our backs and aspens on all other sides. We approached the tree line, but didn’t enter. We heard a few deer running in the opposite direction of us. Pretty typical of deer in the woods, so I didn’t think anything of it. As we walked around the waist high grass some more I noticed the tip of a cougars tail and it’s ears as it slinked away about 40ft out. In a stroke of brilliance I decided to follow it. My brother agreed, so we followed slowly and quietly. In reality the cougar probably put a lot of distance between us and him pretty quickly, but as we were stalking our prey I kept running through scenarios of what would happen if it was stalking us and attacked us. Plus, I had a big stick, so we were safe. After 15 minutes or so, we turned around and headed back to camp disappointed we didn’t get another glimpse of the cougar. I don’t think it was hubris, ego, or overconfidence that led us to follow the cat, but just being naive about the consequences. Fortunately luck was on our side again and nothing bad happened. Watching the show on wolves getting used to humans and attacking in campgrounds made me realize we could have been hurt pretty bad if the cat decided to attack instead of leave.
Finally, I will leave with a good note of caution for anyone around Wolves. Typically they do not like water (or so the experts on Animal Planet said), so if you can get into water when a wolf is attacking it probably won’t follow.
