I am currently reading this book about the five large carnivores of Scandinavia and I am absolutely humbled, both by finding out how little I knew about them, what prejudice I had against them and how people that live in close proximity to them can both love, respect and be angry with them at the same time. I am reading the original release in Swedish.
- What have you encountered in the wild?
- When, where, how?
- What were your initial thoughts, feelings and reactions (physical, psychological, etc.)?
- What do think of them in general? <— this last question applies to everybody, regardless of whether you have seen or met one of these large carnivores or not.
Personally, without having met any one of them, I am humbled, scared, amazed and intrigued by them. I feel for those whose - for instance - livestock are threatened by them, especially if it directly damages business. I also strongly believe that the matter should not be dumbed down to the dichotmy of “ignore those that suffer from them” or “eradicate them”. We are far too intelligent and developed a race to degrade ourselves so.
I grew up in Florida as a kid, and I lived on a lake. I have on more than one occasion encountered alligators. They are assholes.
I remember on occasion, I was probably six years old, maybe a little older, and my parents called the police because there were a couple of alligators sunning themselves on the back lawn by our boathouse. The local police came over and clearly had no idea what to do. They started yelling at the alligators, trying to shoo them back into the water, with little success.
Eventually, the two alligators did creep back into the water, but they were lingering around the boathouse, and in an effort to get the larger one, a female, to go away, the frustrated officers began shooting at the water. This did not have the intended effect. Alligators are not just assholes, they’re much more clever than most people seem to think.
As the officers kept firing into the water, the alligator would hiss at them, and then go under the boathouse to the other side. As the officers would run over to the other side, the alligator would hiss and, predictably, go to the other side of the boathouse and hiss them again. This went on for about five minutes or so until my father had the good sense just to tell them to stop and request that they contact animal control.
As soon as the officers backed off and left, so did the alligators, with a noticeable final hiss that I swear was them laughing.