coolest animal you have seen in the wild

A pack of wolves in yellowstone hands down, crossed the road in front of me last summer when I was there on my Harley, just beautiful animals.

 

Turkeys...



There was none in Ontario for quite a while. Ive seen elk in Alberta, but Id really like to see one in Ontario as they are being reintroduced as well (even have a hunting season now). I could go for seeing less bears though, those fuckers are everywhere.

 

Dolphins while surfing at Bolsa Chica

 

Bears (was almost attacked by a mama, cubs were cute though), elk, bobcat, otters, dolphins, bison, elephant seals, sea turtles, and...
on the California Central Coast no less... ZEBRAS.
And before some of you say "Mr. LogCabin, you're on CRACK! There are no zebras on the central coast that are 'wild'!", well sir or madam, you are incorrect. I would bet $50 bucks to someone who thinks I'm wrong..
Anyone else seen the same zebras?!

 

The Great American Bald Eagle - amazingly big whop ass bird.
Flying Fish while underway in the Pacific aboard the USS Downes.
A tiny yellow and black bird (name?) that somehow found our ship out in the middle of the Pacific somewhere between San Diego and Peril Harbor Hawaii - that's kind of amazing too. Funny, when they landed they were so tired you could just pick them up and hold them.

 

Anhinga performing an actual hunt in Orlando Florida.

There was a man-made pond with a dock, and I was looking at an Anhinga drying it wings across the pond...
I threw some popcorn to some fishies right below me and the light was perfect so I could see the fish through the water just fine.

Lo and behold the Anhinga flew over and dove in, and swam around right under me, and it waited and lurked... and I watched it swim around the bottom and sure enough, after 4 tries it stabbed a fat fish and grabbed it, jumped up to a nearby bush and swallowed it, then continued sunning. These birds get waterlogged so it basically has to dry off after diving or else it can't fly very well.

What was cool was standing right above it on the dock, and seeing the whole underwater hunting process it uses.

 

Hearst castle?

 

Lots of Golden eagles and mountain lions. Also some black bears.

 

Yes

This ^ San Simeon. Hearst had his own freaking wilderness park out there with all sorts of game.

 

i once saw a nematode....

 

Yep yep! Parents have retired out there and volunteer at the castle. The zebras are pretty cool out there! What a life.. graze all day on the green hills while looking at a beautiful stretch of coastline.. and zero predators or worries.

 

The area around there is really beautiful. Especially after it rains, green hills that go on forever

 

Coolest I've seen is a Cougar that ran in front of me when I was going to work, driving up the access road to Lake El Capitan about 4:00am, fucker took up the whole road, very big,very long animal, seemed like it took forever for him to run across, sightings of lions in my area is very rare, the local state bioligist & game warden were very interested as it turns out it was probably a large male they had tranq'd,measured & tagged several years earlier they were happy to see it was still around, I guess they require a large area for territory...

 

white squirrels

 

races

 

& reported.....

 

Yup.
I've seen some beautiful cougars in the Boston area as well. They're facinating to watch.

 

Haha. I grew up in the home of the White Squirrels. Google it. There is an unusually high occurrence of albino gray squirrels. Not to mention meth heads. There is an unusually high occurrence of them a well. Must be something in the water.

 

Coolest? I dunno. I did quite a bit of field work in college. We found some fairly rare snakes but the coolest was probably a huge copperhead - pushing 3', which is big for them.

Seeing moose chilling right next to a major road in Anchorage was pretty crazy.

I've kept a lot of weird stuff over the years. True chameleons are amazingly odd. I had a neon yellow eyelash viper for a long time. It was pretty cool, but obviously not a wild encounter.

It's pretty neat when you're turkey hunting and a bird lands on the vent rib barrel of your shotgun. It's tough not to freak. Also cool when whitetail fawns will walk up to you and get a few feet away if the wind is right.

 

Bigfoot