Any funny hammock stories?

[peterhase]

I once woke up in the Australian outback with a cow sticking his head into my hammock. Gave me a good fright. The whole herd had wandered over curiously after spotting our campsite

[thierict]

I was backpacking in Trinity with a friend and I forgot her tent so I offered my hammock and slept on the ground with the tarp. One deer decided walk next to me and I was worried that it would step on my head so I kept waking up and scaring it away. I gave up after 4 times and went to sleep. Woke up in the morning to see all of my chips neatly eaten.

[Hammockmadness]

About 8-10 years ago I was backpacking in Big Cypress Swamp just north of the Everglades. Around 10:00pm I felt something tapping me on my butt on the bottom of my hammock. It would tap quickly for about 10-12 times and then quit for about 10 min. I leaned over with a flashlight several times to look under my hammock but could not see anything. Gradually the tapping became lighter and lighter until it stopped. When I was packing up in the morning, I found a humongous moth under my sleeping bag that must have gotten in there while I was setting up. It didn't even enter my mind that something was inside my hammock instead of outside.

[Bannerstone]

I was hiking in the Maroon Bells last August, it was several days in and I was kinda feeling bad from the altitude, got a little lazy about policing up my camp. I woke in the night to a sound of something brushing up against my underquilt. I figured some small animal, so I quietly retrieved my headlamp from the shelf in my hammock and looked over to investigate. I saw my first ever up close porcupine and he was huge, he was parked right directly underneath my butt and trying to gnaw on my coffee mug. If he'd have done one of those tail flip maneuvers I'd have been stuck for sure but he didn't seem to mind me putting the light on him, in fact I had to get kinda grumpy with him to shoo him away. Then he went directly to my hiking poles which were holding up my tarp, handles down I might add, and started to gnaw on those. I had to throw a couple of sticks at him to get him to leave. I guess hiking pole handles are all salty so they really dig those. The next day I met back up with another hiker I'd met the previous day, apparently I'd chased the porcupine right over into their camp where he got her hiking poles but good.


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Later I found out he had a tussle with two of my buddy's huskies around 1:00 am which kept them up for an hour or two pulling quills. He also chewed a hole in a cuben front pack I left laying by the fire ring and I gather by the commotion the following morning from another group camped nearby that he'd raided their site too. Just another evening's work for that porcie.

David

[draco_1967]

I am still pretty new to hanging. On my first trip, which was last year, I had a rough first night. I got to my spot a bit late. I was able to set up the hammock and tarp in the twilight, but by the time I sat down to cook dinner, it was dark...very dark. The moon wouldn't rise for several more hours. So I broke out my headlamp and left in on the red LED to try an preserve some night vision. The spot was near a good sized river, so a lot of background noise. Well, as I was cooking my grub, I heard some loud rustling/running from a little ways away, so I grab my light, shine it in the direction of the noise, and see two eyes staring back at me! It scared the snot out of me. The critter promptly scurried away. From the ruckus that little guy was making, I figured it was something much bigger. Probably a raccoon

At that point my adrenaline is sufficiently high, and my overactive imagination is wildly imagining death by raccoon I finished dinner and got ready for bed. Sometime in the wee hours of the morning, I woke up to the sound of something BIG moving around near my hammock. It went on for quite a while, and occasionally it hit one of my guy lines, shaking my tarp. Suddenly, I caught the distinct smell of feces. I was pretty sure it was not mine, although I am fairly freaked out! Eventually, I just nod off, though I don't sleep well for the rest of the night. When I woke up in the morning, I discovered a present right outside my tarp that caused the offending odor: a bit steamy pile of elk dung