So I rolled my ankle last Sunday on my run. This Sunday, I saw a hawk flying across the academic quad of campus holding a squirrel. How peaceful on a Sunday morning.
But it got me thinking to the various animal encounters I’ve had while running outdoors. I mean I love animals, but I’d rather not have such “close encounters” on my runs.
One time I was running by myself on this trail I normal run through a local park near my house back at home and suddenly I hear something moving ahead of me on the trail.
I could see something moving, but I couldn’t make out what it was because it was so black and furry. Then it clicked and I realized I was in a bit of smelly situation. Yes, I did just drop a pun about finding myself across from a skunk.
I had no idea what to do! I never thought I would have the issue of running into a skunk! I mean I really felt that was like more of a problem that dogs have. I just stood there frozen staring at this skunk who was going about its merry business on this running path when I hear more leaves rustling.
I look a little past this skunk and see that flowing it was the CUTEST LITTLE GROUP of baby skunks! (If you’ve never seen baby skunks before look here) I was in terrified by this full grown skunk, but I also felt this instinct to audibly say “AWWWWW’ at the baby skunks.
But I didn’t want to get sprayed so I stood there silently for five minutes thinking about how I could’ve been watching Netflix right then until all of the skunks moved along then I continued my run.
The other animal encounter was with my running partner.
We have been running together since high school, we have the perfect balance of motivation but still allowing lazy days and it is great. We’ve come across many different animals over the years from box turtle to bunnies, but this story is by far the scariest and also funniest.
We were running (just to clarify in case you didn’t know what we were doing on our run) through our typical trail in the afternoon over the summer. We had been going for about a half an hour at that point and we started to goof off. There was a softball that we found and we were kicking it along with us.
We got to a turn in the trail where it is a tree and a fence to our left and a section of short bushes on our right.
I kicked the ball to left too far and we HAD to stop to find it. Suddenly the scariest noise comes out of the bushes on the right.
I thought it was a rapid dog. That was it, you know? I was dead right there. My running partner was screaming so I was screaming and there was just a
lot of screaming happening as this TURKEY, that’s right a mother fucking turkey scared the shit out of us, flew away.
Oh yeah, turkeys can fly and it’s probably very entertaining to watch when YOUR LIFE ISN’T FLASHING BEFORE YOUR EYES!
Once we realized it was a turkey that just almost murdered us we started laughing really hard. we almost were attacked by a turkey! A TURKEY! Of all creatures, a turkey. I still don’t understand why the are not considered dinosaurs because they really look like a kind of dinosaur.
After, we collected ourselves we continued on run but to this day we still run cautiously past those bushes.
