Animals, Hammocks and you!

[solstice]

A different time, a very quiet still night, just before I fell asleep I heard a strange noice below me. I stayed still and listened to the "crunching" for a while. It was very faint but obvious. After a few minutes my curiosity go the best of me and I switched over to my stomach with my face pointing down and outside my hammock. I slowly got accustomed to the night light. The sound came again and i saw a small leaf moving just below my face. I reached down and moved the leaf and there was a worm digging his was up from the soil into the leaf litter.

Heh, that's actually pretty cool.

[Fishpig]

Camped At the Flour Lake NFS Campground for the fishing opener. Set up, built a fire, Had a few "SHASTAS", they were good, so I had a few more. It started to SNOW. Not a sound could be heard. Silence. Snap. Then a second later, SNAP. Closer. The Snaps went on for an hour or so. Real close. My heart was beating fast and I was definitely ALERT as I drifted off, Clutching my 1100 Rem Slug. I awoke in my camp chair, under my tarp with a yearling Moose not more than 30 ft away from me. When I moved, he ran off. Judging by the Tracks in the Snow, He must of circled most of the night. The Snaps? Browsing on Willow Buds. Maybe he was lonely or curious. I'm glad he didn't BUMP me. PS I'll Stay up North too, NO COW ANTS!

[Deadphans]

Funny you brought this up, my fiance and I had a bump in the night up in Middle Wisconsin a couple weeks back.

We went on our first "backpacking" trip with friends. We typically car camp as a group, but we wanted to test out our bail-out-bags. The camp site was a 5.2 mile hike in through swamp, forest, rocky hills, sandy hills, and even more hills...and we did the hike in the dark!!

So we get to camp around 10:30, quick dinner from the jetboil, then stomp down some weeds and hang our two blackbirds in a V shape between three trees.

So fast forward to morning, and I had this really weird dream that there was an animal up in the tree staring down at me (no tarp due to clear skys) in the Blackbird trying to figure out what I am. In my dream, it's face kept changing, dog, bear, cat, bobcat, lion, bear, raccoon, opossum...it's like my brain couldn't put a face to it, but finally settled on Bobcat, probably because it was up in the tree looking down at me.

My fiance says to me, "so what bumped us last night?", and I"m like Huh? (just barely remembering my weird dream). She said that something bumped the underside of her hammock last night hard enough to take her up. We have a very large dog that likes to "shark the hammocks"...you know, he runs under it like Jaws did to that little boat, bumping us upwards with his shoulders to get our attention, and we tend to hang our hammock high, so that's about 26" off the ground. But we didn't have our dogs with us on this trip! She said that something sharked her, and she grumbled "go to bed Dee" and rolled over and back to sleep, just as she hears me grumble in my sleep about being bumped myself.

So something large enough to bump us 26" off the ground, and big enough to wake us...and we have no idea what it was. I so wish I had a game camera setup, just so I could see coyotes sniffin our butts, or maybe blackbears thinking we're a nice pair of burritos. I figure it was just raccoon, but Brianne insists it was big enough for her to mistake it for our 30" tall, 100+lb dog.

That is a pretty good story. Pretty amazing how the mind works isn't it. That is like unconsciously knowing.

[FLRider]

Had one a few weeks back at Ichetucknee Springs...

I was sleeping in my Hennessy at a developed campsite, and was awoken by what sounded like a felling crew going at one of the trees next to me. I'm a fairly hard sleeper at the best of times, and being woken up at oh-dark-thirty doesn't help that much. So I mumbled something incoherent and not fit for television broadcast and rolled over to see what was disturbing my sleep. I was thinking that it had to be at least man-sized (hoping that it was one of the dogs that the car campers had brought with them or maybe a deer, rather than someone trying to steal my bike or a bear feeling adventurous)

Turns out it was an armadillo. Those things are noisier than a semi moving through the woods, for certain. I cursed at it and rolled over to go back to sleep.


Also, last week hiking the San Felasco loop, I came face-to-face with a whitetail yearling that wasn't particularly skittish of me. That was fun; what wasn't so fun was nearly stepping on a coral snake less than another two hundred yards down the trail. That'll wake you up, better than a triple espresso!

[TinaLouise]

This year at Boy Scout Summer Camp, the week we decided to go, there's not very many scouters. So the camp sites are really deserted. Me and the other adult leader are hanging in a section of woods well away from the scouts and also into woods that didn't look like anyone had ever camped near or in. So we get the scouts to their tents and they've finally settled down. We go to our hammocks and I'm just about asleep when the most god-awful animal sound occures right next to me. I just about lost it. I yelled to the other adult... hey did you hear that? And WHAT is it??... She doesn't know either. Well we both finally go to sleep. At about 4am I'm awaken again by that same noise. So I quickly open up my netting and shine my flashlight behind me. I see two evil looking eyes shining back at me and it's in the body of something that looks like a cat. That morning we find out that there's a baby bob-cat prowling the camp!!! Lucky me, I must by right by his den or mayby nearby??

TinaLouise

[TN Cereal Killa]

This took place when I was 12 at bo's landing at realfoot lake. My dad and I were camping and fishing for the weekend and storm came in. So we got in our tent and just tried to get some sleep for the night. Then in the middle of the night I wake up from thunder and I was laying on my side facing the wall of the tent. Lighting flashes and I found myself face to face with a crawl fish. Lol I know not the scariest but it scared the s... Out of me.

[slowhike]

This happened on one of the "Annual HF Winter Hangs" (Greyson Highlands State Park, VA) a few years ago.
I retired to my warm hammock on a cold, winter night w/ snow on the ground. Just moments after setting in I began to hear the faint call of a bird. I thought to myself, "What??? I've never herd a bird singing like that at night. And it's the dead of winter"
I continued to listen, laying very still. The bird's songs were changing. "What is this, a mocking bird on a winter night???"

Finally I realized that I had accidentally turned on the Ipod on which I had bird songs. It was in a bag just above my head

[Great White]

Me too yikes....this deserves an image link

So that is what those things are! I seem to always see them and they scare me to the point where I do a dance to get away. I am glad that my fear is justified.

[Dudorino]

A skunk visited me one night. I could hear it pass under me, but luckily it didn't touch my QU. The stink lingered a while and I didn't move until the air was clear. Yuck.

[weaver2469]

This happened on one of the "Annual HF Winter Hangs" (Greyson Highlands State Park, VA) a few years ago.
I retired to my warm hammock on a cold, winter night w/ snow on the ground. Just moments after setting in I began to hear the faint call of a bird. I thought to myself, "What??? I've never herd a bird singing like that at night. And it's the dead of winter"
I continued to listen, laying very still. The bird's songs were changing. "What is this, a mocking bird on a winter night???"

Finally I realized that I had accidentally turned on the Ipod on which I had bird songs. It was in a bag just above my head

This might be the winner. Good thing you didn't have "Songs of the Humpback Whales" on your ipod our you would have lost your mind.