Animal Confrontations

General
6

Looks like a beautiful trail. Looking at all the pictures people post, I wish Madison had MTB trails. If you want to get fit by unicycling, MUni is definitely the way to do it.
Madison is very bike friendly, but you don’t get to see much wildlife, and you have to go a ways just to find a good trail… the bike paths are nice though.
It makes me want to attend college somewhere consistently warm and with good, well-kept, non-restricted trails. Terry seems to have lots of fun :smiley:

But then again, looking at AspenMike’s posts, Colorado is pretty awesome too!

7

Yes, I stay jealous of AspenMike’s locale. I was up there in his neighborhood (we have some friends up there) and met him but didn’t have the opportunity to ride there. Someday Mike?

8

when the soil is wet my Muni makes absolutley no noise (except my pounding heart) and then I do surprise some animals: a deer in England (“I say, that’s shocking” seemed to say the beast), another one in France (apparently the wind was going the other way: I do smell when riding :astonished: ), many roe deers in the Pyrénées, but on my usual trails I am on a first name basis with the squirrels :sunglasses: . never met a pink elephant (though I tried!).

9

My favourite ‘confrontation’ was with an echidna, I’ve only seen 2 in my life and I certainly didn’t expect to almost ride into one on the local trail!

Cute little things :slight_smile:

10

There’s a family of skunks that lives near my local trail. They are out and about in the evenings when I ride. I have to pay attention all the time. I haven’t been squirted, but I’ve gotten close enough to see the skunk stand on its front paws and show me its tail.

I also saw an armadillo once. I’m used to seeing them squished flat, so I it was interesting to watch a live one.

11

Had a deer just jump right out in front of me…all spazzy and crazy…the other day on ride. He looked panicked and I fell off. Almost like he was waiting for me.
Kinda cool though.
Shug

12

Loads of New Forest ponies and their foals while I was down south. They’re well used to traffic and people - but its sometimes hard to try to keep from going between a foal and its mother. I had one curious foal follow me quite a way.

There were also some HUGE highland cattle roaming around, all hair and horns. They made my dog detour widely. He says he wasn’t scared, just adopting a strategic defensive position.

13

Where I live the deer and elk just roam around town. I don’t have to go out and uni, I can just sit in the back yard. And it’s not just deer–a bear knocked my fence down a while back. I think it was running away from something.

When I do go out and ride XC, I’m more likely to see a horse on the trail than anything else. Usually with someone riding it.

14

Tom Turkey

I was riding on a trail near my mouse on the morning around 2 weeks ago and came up on a big turkey walking across the path. He didn’t even brake stride and kept on going maybe 10 feet away from me. Don’t know who was more suprized him or me?

15

My best encounters have been a fisher in the morning, a bunch of woodcocks zipping around at dusk, and a flying squirrel one night.
Ro

16

If we’re talkin’ best encounters while unicycling, that has to be the weasel I saw by the river. I didn’t know they even lived around here.

17

A little bunny or a 6 point buck; which is more dangerous?

Came face to face with a WhiteTail deer while riding the 12.5 mile multi-use path that is Owensboro’s Greenbelt Park. There was a creek on the left and a 12 foot fence on the right. He tried to run away from me but there was a jogger coming the other way and it was clear after 5 small circles that he felt trapped. If that fence had been 8 or maybe 10 foot tall, he would have cleared it easy but 12 foot was just too much with no room to get a running start. That did not stop him from trying. 3 times springing off the fence like a trampoline and flying through the air landing in a thud on the pavement. I dismounted my 36er and kept my distance having seen 1st hand (Bow Hunter in my younger days) how a sharp the hoof of an injured deer can be. After it was all said and done, I told the jogger “You thought I was going to be the craziest thing you saw today”.

10 miles down the path and again with a grown up fence line on the right, a tiny little bunny rabbit darted out of nowhere right at my wheel. Wide open (12-14mph) there was nothing I could do but pray. Felt like I might have clipped his tiny little foot (I thought those feet were supposed to be lucky) which left him rolling across the path and me scared to death. I did not UPD but I did hammer on the brake. Finished the ride paranoid at a more manageable pace.

Moral of the story: the bunny is more dangerous because I can see the deer coming.

18

Ooh, no kidding. I’ve had birds (well… they tend to fly right in front of the wheel), rabbits, squirrels, etc. dart right past my wheel. I don’t even have brakes, so when I’m cruising along at 13-14 mph, there’s not a whole lot that I can do. Even with brakes I couldn’t stop at the speeds it would demand.

Luckily I haven’t actually hit one yet. No doubt if I hit it in the wrong place it’ll end up killing the animal, and likely hurting me.

19

Got up close and personal with a kangaroo and a wallaby in the Blue Mountains in Australia. The wallaby ran off quickly, but the kangaroo stayed and gawked. It was really magical until he asked me where’s my other wheel.

20

I had a coyote jump onto a bike trail in front of me a few weeks ago. I followed it for about 50 feet before it hopped off the trail and took off through the underbrush.

In that same area I have come across roadrunners while unicycling. I have never seen the two species together. :roll_eyes:

Scott

21

Bear:
Can’t remember if I’ve actually seen one while on a ride. There was one on my “bachelor party” ride, before my wedding in 2000. The other guys saw it and Nathan got a picture. I thought they were messing with me until he showed the pic on his camera!

Startled an Elk:
Elk are big. I was in Yellowstone National Park in 1995. Legal unicycling on roads only; this was a dirt road closed to traffic; about a mile ride in to see a natural arch. Just me, I’m zooming along on my old 24", which is as quiet as the riding surface. I came cruising around a bend, and there’s this huge elk lying down (legs folded) on the side of the road, about 50’ away. I stopped as quick as I could, while it jumped to its feet. Big! While I slowly reached for my camera, it loped off into the trees. A little farther up the trail I also had a stare-down with a coyote, about 100’ or more away.

Rattlesnakes:
With all this MUni riding I’ve been doing in CA since 1996, I expected to have more rattlesnake encounters on the trails. Nope, very few. Not that I haven’t seen lots of them, but they’re usually on the paved bike paths! They like to lie about on hot days. Give them a wide berth and everyone’s fine. I have pictures. :slight_smile:

Bobcats:
On a couple of occasions I’ve seen one, always at a distance, on remote trails. You can tell they’re not house cats because they’re bigger, and they strut down the center of the trail like they own it.

American River Bike Path:
This 30-mile path runs from downtown Sacramento’s riverfront, along the Sacramento and American Rivers all the way up to Folsom Lake. It’s an awesome urban parkway, which I used for most of my training for Ride the Lobster, other road races and my recent century ride. Along there, mostly within the Sacramento city limits, I’ve seen coyote, deer, jackrabbits, regular rabbits, eagles/hawks, beaver, turtles and lots of wild turkeys. In the springtime, the male turkeys are “strutting their stuff” for the disinterested females. :slight_smile:

22

I saw an armadillo once too! It was the second animal i ever saw while riding, the first was a snake i ran over once… oopsies. Kinda cool animals though, i took a picture and watched it till it ran away :roll_eyes:

After all, it was the first live one ever :stuck_out_tongue:

23

Lots of animals round here, but nothing exciting. Most dangerous ones are cows when they’ve got calves, or aggressive pet dogs. Only poisonous things are adders, but it’s rare to see one, let alone be bitten, and the bite is not very serious to most adults anyway. Probably far more chance of being killed by breathing in a wasp…

Nothing that would eat you here - America and Australia sound pretty dodgy :astonished:

Rob

24

What happened to me once, and only once, was a chance encounter with what I believed to be a Samsquantch, but later turned out to be a cougar that had whiskers making him look like a frenchman. He may have been high.

25

Where I ride I see the occasional deer, blue heron, turkey, or snapping turtle. And rabbits, my neighborhood has a ridiculous number of rabbits running around.