One of my favorite things about trail running is you never know what you may see on the trail. I've shared the local trails with all sorts of animals -- horses, cows (some mean ones), bobcats, raccoons, birds, and deer.
Here are a couple of stories about some critter encounters -- some cool and some scary (at least for me!)
Snakes -- snakes actually scare me pretty badly. So much so that I almost quit a night race last summer when I nearly stepped on an enormous copperhead. It took every ounce of courage that I had to move past that coiled up snake on the trail. Later that night I saw several other snakes. That race really freaked me out. The snakes were on the hunt and I was on their trail highway! Since that race, I've jumped over water moccasins on the trail and even had one charge me recently. So I may finally be getting over my fear of snakes!
Owls -- one early morning (still dark) at White Rock Lake a very large owl swooped down on me thinking I may be some kind of prey. I ducked just in time to save my scalp.
Spiders -- this is one of my least favorite things about trail running. In the summer if you are the first person on the trail, you will encounter giant spider webs (complete with spiders) crossing the trail. And the worst thing is, you won't see the web until it's too late. Imagine the scene in "Raiders of the Lost Ark" where Indiana Jones is running through the cave with the giant boulder chasing him. He ends up crashing through a bunch of spider webs. That's the way I feel on my summer early morning trail runs. I just love knocking spiders off my head and spitting web out of my mouth!
Coyotes -- seeing a coyote is pretty special. They are incredibly common in my neighborhood. One early morning at White Rock Lake, I happened upon a male and female walking together. I was literally 20 feet from these two wild animals. I stopped running and watched them. They looked at me for a second and then trotted off into the woods. It was a very cool experience.
My favorite critter encounter has to be the possum I saw at "24 the Hard Way" in 2009. It was 3am and I was 19 hours into a 24 hour race when I came upon a small possum. I thought he was dead as he was just lying on his side. I felt bad for him as I continued to run. This race is a one mile loop course that you run as many times as possible in 24 hours. So I came upon the possum again one mile later. That's when it dawned on me that this possum may not be dead at all. He may just be "playing possum". I got a kick out of thinking about this poor possum crossing the road in the middle of the night and seeing a runner charging at him. So he goes into his little possum act and falls over "dead". The runner moves on, and the little possum "wakes" up and starts to move off when he sees another runner come charging down the path. So he freaks out and falls over "dead" again. This went on for at least two hours. Finally the possum realized that the runners where no threat to him and moved on into the forest. That really cracked me up and made the lonely night time hours pass by a little quicker for me. I was a little sad when I saw that the possum had finally run off.
