Worst Critter Encounter In The Tree
- Thread starter Limbrat
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woodworkingboy
TreeHouser
Dave, 2-3" is common to see with the wasps. Carb cleaner is my weapon of choice to kill them, it must do a quick number on their lungs, but after being sprayed they curl and shrivel up to much smaller, so don't much make show specimens. Having been stung in the middle of my back by one once, I take no prisoners. Poison that dissolves flesh, an infection is guaranteed. An even deadlier poison type is moving up from down south, was on the news. Increasing fatalities.
Being stung by one of those things is definitely not on my bucket list, Jay!
Dropped a maple top in a backyard with two black squirrels in it years ago. One ran off, the other was doing the funky chicken dance - convulsing. So, my stalwart partner in crime on the ground picked up a stick, and proceeded to club it untill all movement ceased.
Quite glad there were no human spectators, because awhile back in the same area, a guy accidently ran into a black bear (cub) with his vehicle, and it was badly maimed. So, even with spectators all around, he picked up a large rock, and terminated it, which did NOT go over well. Got charged with animal cruelty, but charges later got dropped. Similar to another humanitarian who shot & killed a mother bear with three cubs (one of the cubs also apparently shot and wounded) in the middle of the night in downtown Bracebridge (Ontario) last week. Cubs went up a tree. Neighbours not impressed. Guy has been charged with negligent discharge of firearm.
http://barrie.ctvnews.ca/opp-charge...bear-fatally-shot-in-neighbourhood-1.2638672#
Dropped a maple top in a backyard with two black squirrels in it years ago. One ran off, the other was doing the funky chicken dance - convulsing. So, my stalwart partner in crime on the ground picked up a stick, and proceeded to club it untill all movement ceased.
Quite glad there were no human spectators, because awhile back in the same area, a guy accidently ran into a black bear (cub) with his vehicle, and it was badly maimed. So, even with spectators all around, he picked up a large rock, and terminated it, which did NOT go over well. Got charged with animal cruelty, but charges later got dropped. Similar to another humanitarian who shot & killed a mother bear with three cubs (one of the cubs also apparently shot and wounded) in the middle of the night in downtown Bracebridge (Ontario) last week. Cubs went up a tree. Neighbours not impressed. Guy has been charged with negligent discharge of firearm.
http://barrie.ctvnews.ca/opp-charge...bear-fatally-shot-in-neighbourhood-1.2638672#
Cobleskill
Treehouser
I had a dog that was fighting with something while I was working in the distant area. It went on for quite a while and I decided to go take a look. It had a big old coon up next to a down tree. When the coon would turn and try to run up the down tree my dog would grab it and yank it back down to the ground. It looked like a stalemate. I looked around for a weapon and found a 4 inch branch about 4 feet long. Broke that over the coons head. I then got some softball size rocks and beaned it several times. That seemed to do the trick. I was amazed at the size of the thing and picked it up by a back leg to gauge its weight. That's when it came back to and snarled at me. Never try to kill a coon with substandard weapons.
FireFighterZero
Captain Zero!
Biggest one I have shot was 40 pounds. They are big and nasty. Kill cats, dogs, wreck stored grain, cause power outages. There was a gal the other day hit on on the highway and it caused both her car's airbags to deploy. I have no mercy when it comes to adult coons.
My buddy needed a grain sample from his combine the other day. He had shut down the day earlier and had forgotten to take a sample, so he had to go back the next day and get one. He climbed up the steps and opened the inspection door, and found a big boar coon eating wheat. He promptly jumped off the steps to the ground, a distance of like 10 feet. Luckily he was not hurt.
My buddy needed a grain sample from his combine the other day. He had shut down the day earlier and had forgotten to take a sample, so he had to go back the next day and get one. He climbed up the steps and opened the inspection door, and found a big boar coon eating wheat. He promptly jumped off the steps to the ground, a distance of like 10 feet. Luckily he was not hurt.
toyotadadon
TreeHouser
Me and jamie were pruning an oak together jamie was above me he removed a rat nest and out flew a dusky footed woodrat it landed on me clinging to my sleeve for dear life i shook him off he hit the ground and ran off cute little thing them dusky footed woodrats..i think they are endangered...
MasterBlaster
Administrator Emeritus
I cut off a coon's tail once... felt bad for the 'lil fellow. He was in a hollow limb that I was butt-jumping and rode it to the ground. He hauled ass so I guess he was OK, but no more tail.
MasterBlaster
Administrator Emeritus
Awesome pic.
woodworkingboy
TreeHouser
Had a startling brief face off with a flying squirrel on the ground that came out of a log. It took off and scampered up a tree faster than I could get my mind around what was happening. In the late afternoon when they start to jump and glide, a real cool thing to watch.
Having spent almost my entire teen life buzzing wash fans just like in the pic above, starting in 73, the scale of the avian slaughter I committed was horrendous. Wash fans are essentially pigeon n dove condos, packed with baby birds come May/June, and a hundred bucks was enough for me as a teen to kill em all n haul em to the dump. The only time it bugged me was killing a mother owl with a Super 2 defending her hatchlings above me in the palm, she too went for my face, but that time I was ready, luck o the Irish.
The most bizarre and ironic critter horror story I know of happened in LA. It involved a big lanky groundman working for my two brothers' tree company. He decided to start climbing n doing his own jobs on the weekends, borrowing my brothers truck n equipment to accomplish. Now these were the days we'd put two stage 40' extension ladders on top of the chiptruck box, to access 50 foot wash fan heads, when accessible. Now our rule was that once you ran out of ladder? The first thing you did was put your chain/lanyard around the trunk, whether you'd reached the green head or not, no climbing higher without being chained in, period. That was the rule poor Paul broke that weekend.
He was just six feet short of the head, an easy free climb. But no sooner than him starting up, a rat ran up his arm, startling him so badly he let go from over 50 feet up, dropped about 15 feet before face planting on the ladder rungs, then skidding down the ladder, bouncing off the top of the box before coming to rest on the ground at last.
The irony's that Paul swore it was the best thing that ever happened to him! You see he was a big lanky farm boy with an overgrown elfen face that doomed his luck with attracting women, but after his facial reconstructive surgery?
He looked like Stoney Curtis or Cary Granite from the FlintStones cartoon! Suddenly he had multiple babes to spend his weekends with!
True story.
Jomo
MasterBlaster
Administrator Emeritus
No lanyard = no brains
vharrison
Island Girl
I am surprised no one has mentioned a snake. 
MasterBlaster
Administrator Emeritus
I once cut a big king snake into pieces. It was hiding out in a hollow log I was piecing down. I looked down at the ground and saw all his pieces squirming around...
Jay, the stuff you post about this creature is pretty over the top. It's hard to perhaps fully grasp the concept of them cuz we have nothing like that here that I know of. We have white face hornets, they are bad ass, you don't want to mess with them, but they never ever kill anyone that I know of, they just sting and make you yelp like a lil bitch.
So Im curious what the perception of them is over there. Here, every few months or so someone gets mauled and killed by a mean dog, for example, but it is definitely not something one ever thinks about day to day, its extremely random and rare. Do folks over there worry about the hornets? Are they an issue for tree guys? Are they easily detectable and avoidable?
woodworkingboy
TreeHouser
Cory, they're a fact of life for three or four months out of the year, so people have gotten used to having them about. People working outdoors run into them, particularly in the woods and other rural areas, but it isn't like they become immediately aggressive upon contact with humans. My experience is that you have to bother them in some way to be targeted. They do hold a grudge for awhile, the case with the wasp that stung me was where I was trimming the hedge outside my shop and I encountered one that didn't seem to want to leave the area, buzzed me a couple times, so I went back into my shop for about five minutes, a distance from the hedge to the door around forty feet. When I walked out the door again for a few feet, the thing just shot right at me from the hedge, so i took off running and it stung me through my shirt in my back. I thought it hard to believe that it was still aggressive after I left it's proximity for that time, and from that distance. They are so large you can both hear them flying and easy to spot. If you haven't upset them they will fly off without being aggressive, unless you're close to a nest with their comings and goings, soon enough they generally seem to disappear. They're a concern, so most people likely to encounter them carry spray, and if they are noted in an area, especially when you see them in multiples with the likelihood of a nest about, all you can do is stay watchful and wary. I think their main occupation is looking for honey bee hives to attack. Guys that raise bees have to set out traps for them during the active season. They can really be a problem and decimate a hive very quickly.
I read about the sting being described as like getting punctured by a hot nail, but i found it to be more like a wallop with a baseball bat, pretty good swelling and consistent pain for 2-3 days, but the worst part was the most terrible itching that started after a couple days, the worst I have ever experienced, like you want to die. It was really horrible. I didn't seek any treatment, not knowing what i would be experiencing, but I would for sure as quick as possible if there was a next time.
Some years are particularly bad with so many of them about. They put out cautions on the news. I must encounter about a dozen or so each year, unless I run into a nest.
I read about the sting being described as like getting punctured by a hot nail, but i found it to be more like a wallop with a baseball bat, pretty good swelling and consistent pain for 2-3 days, but the worst part was the most terrible itching that started after a couple days, the worst I have ever experienced, like you want to die. It was really horrible. I didn't seek any treatment, not knowing what i would be experiencing, but I would for sure as quick as possible if there was a next time.
Some years are particularly bad with so many of them about. They put out cautions on the news. I must encounter about a dozen or so each year, unless I run into a nest.
woodworkingboy
TreeHouser
Your more intelligent wasp, perhaps. They do direct their buddies to food locations like other wasps aren't capable of. Predators unlike other flying insects, but who know how much they can think of other things.
Limbrat
TreeHouser
- Thread Starter Thread Starter
- #44
Some pretty cool stories! I've read about the Asian Wasps and they sound like pretty bad dudes. I've got some squirrel stories but one that comes to mind first has nothing to do with tree work. When I was Troubleman, I went on a transformer outage and sure enough the fuse on the transformer was blown and there's a squirrel hanging by his teeth on the stinger wire between the blown fuse and the bushing on the transformer. I thought, he must've been on top of the tank (which is grounded) and just reached up and bit the wire, which was energized at 7,200 volts. About that time, he shook, like he was trying to get loose. I went up in the bucket and had to pry his mouth open with a screwdriver to get him off. He was pretty well toasted but alive. He tried to crawl around when I put him on the ground but I put him out of his misery. The only one out of many hundreds I've seen that survived a phase to ground contact. I love squirrels, they made me a lot of money through the years.
MasterBlaster
Administrator Emeritus
I'm surprised the government hasn't implicated a program to eradicate those bastards. Pay a bounty for their nests or dead bodies...
Al Smith
Mac Daddy
I cut into a nest of hibernating bats once .Tom dropped a big hollow soft maple with a big boar coon inside that was very unhappy .Tom ran
I faced off with a big rotweiller with big teeth and over 100 pounds .I just happened to have a running chainsaw in my hands at the time .Fido decided to pass .
I faced off with a big rotweiller with big teeth and over 100 pounds .I just happened to have a running chainsaw in my hands at the time .Fido decided to pass .
MasterBlaster
Administrator Emeritus
As well he should!
timbertramp
TreeHouser
Logging I used to grab coons outta logs all the time, climbing I've found squirrels coons, a opossum, but the worst by far was a skunk.lucky for me I was in my yard, bad news for him my dog was in my yard. Kinda bummed me out cause they really tear up the bees around my place
pigwot
M's, Juniper's, Lowen’s, and Inge’s Grandpa
They'll dig up ground dwelling bees like yellowjackets and eat them at night.
I recall posting in the past about dropping a tree while clearing a lot and two black snakes came rolling out of a hollow that was 60 feet up. My groundsman hadn't seen them as he was on the Come-a-Long. Just as he worked his way into the top to untie the pull line they started moving which spooked him and he headed for the truck and wouldn't come out till the brush was cleared. Some peoples' fear of snakes is cripplingly strong.
I had a flying squirrel rocket right past my ear as I got to a hollow up a tree I was pruning in Michigan, and I turned to watch his glide - that was when I saw that their tails are triangular in cross-section and are used like an aileron to 'steer'. Worst to date was butt-pushing a large branch on a locust removal so it would fall sideways and knock off a baseball-bat-sized dead stub off the next tree. As I hung my saw back on my saddle to reposition something hit the back of my head, under the rim of my helmet, as seemingly the entire defensive committee of a bee hive which was in a hollow below that stub attacked me. My head was huge for a while... I needed a shot as all my smooth muscle was reacting, and breathing was getting difficult. The doctor quit counting stings after a while and estimated about a hundred or so.
I recall posting in the past about dropping a tree while clearing a lot and two black snakes came rolling out of a hollow that was 60 feet up. My groundsman hadn't seen them as he was on the Come-a-Long. Just as he worked his way into the top to untie the pull line they started moving which spooked him and he headed for the truck and wouldn't come out till the brush was cleared. Some peoples' fear of snakes is cripplingly strong.
I had a flying squirrel rocket right past my ear as I got to a hollow up a tree I was pruning in Michigan, and I turned to watch his glide - that was when I saw that their tails are triangular in cross-section and are used like an aileron to 'steer'. Worst to date was butt-pushing a large branch on a locust removal so it would fall sideways and knock off a baseball-bat-sized dead stub off the next tree. As I hung my saw back on my saddle to reposition something hit the back of my head, under the rim of my helmet, as seemingly the entire defensive committee of a bee hive which was in a hollow below that stub attacked me. My head was huge for a while... I needed a shot as all my smooth muscle was reacting, and breathing was getting difficult. The doctor quit counting stings after a while and estimated about a hundred or so.
woodworkingboy
TreeHouser
Just a shot, Pat, they didn't put you on an iv drip?
