My 14 pound dog regularly chases flocks of turkeys in our yard and forces them to fly up in to the trees.
Most people - especially in cities - aren’t used to wildlife and are easily scared, just as those turkeys aren’t used to a dog chasing after them.
The first time I was in NYC there was a raccoon in the center of a trail in Central Park, just kind of chilling. Everyone was giving it a ridiculously wide berth and people looked at me like I was crazy for walking right by it. It’s just a raccoon. As long as it’s not rabid it’s less potentially dangerous than many dogs.
Of course, there’s the flip side of the coin where people think it’s OK to approach large wildlife in national parks…
Anywhere other than an extremely busy city park, sure. I've put down animals I thought might be rabid before, and in my experience they usually act a bit more odd than "I'm extremely used to people."
Animals that are habituated to humans are also dangerous though.
People feed squirrels and raccoons, and then some random passerby ends up getting attacked by the habituated animal who wants food. Squirrels can easily draw blood.
terrified? I've never seen a racoon being even slightly afraid of people. I mean yes, they may give you a way, yet it would be demonstratively very slow and with a look of total annoyance. Actually seeing racoons first time here in CA - there are a lot of them everywhere on Peninsula - that was the first time when i questioned the mantra that the humans are the top of creation as i saw that at least racoons are definitely not aware about that, and judging by the pretty contemptful look in their eyes they have a pretty different opinion about that.
thats probably because collectively we stopped using even elementary technology like atlatl, bow+arrow or slingshot, and we lost the need to hunt for the most part. A relatively primitive human could kill racoons with the standard tools they had then. If you needed to you could figure it out.
Where did you punch this goose? I should think the head/bill area would be hard to hit and painful. The breast would be hard to get to on account of wings and neck. Punching a goose in the back doesn't seem sporting, but maybe it was attacking someone.
Do you pick the duck-sized horses or the horse-sized duck?
>> I should think the head/bill area would be hard to hit and painful.
Significantly harder to hit but significantly less painful than a human head.
Plus geese lead with their heads. Classic boxing mistake.
I didn't hurt the bird, but a good pop did make him and his two buddies rethink trying to attack me for daring to come within 200yrds of them on the fairway. I've seen some people get upset about pace of play, but this was the first time I saw the forward group come after the back one.
I went with a punch instead of the golf club I had in my hand because I didn't want to kill the bird.
Sure. A grown adult can take on a turkey, but that adult will definitely take some blows from the turkey's spurs. Like someone else mentioned, it's not worth it over a public space in the city.
Most people - especially in cities - aren’t used to wildlife and are easily scared, just as those turkeys aren’t used to a dog chasing after them.
The first time I was in NYC there was a raccoon in the center of a trail in Central Park, just kind of chilling. Everyone was giving it a ridiculously wide berth and people looked at me like I was crazy for walking right by it. It’s just a raccoon. As long as it’s not rabid it’s less potentially dangerous than many dogs.
Of course, there’s the flip side of the coin where people think it’s OK to approach large wildlife in national parks…