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Seeing Cryptids: The Problems

Looks like a goat with helium balloons attached to it's back. It's not even posed in an aerodynamic position to suggest it was flying.
 
Jodie said:
I've been swooped by a barred owl, you haven't known fear until a massive ball of feathers flies in your face. I have no doubt it was a barred owl.
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No doubt at all? It could have been a snowy owl if it was in the right place. Snowy owls have been migrating further south some winters. I saw a couple a few years ago down in Vermont, and even got good pictures of one. Or it could have been a great horned owl. We rarely see them but we hear them at night.

I do, however, agree that being swooped by an owl at dusk or dark is quite an experience. So is just walking in the woods and suddenly spotting one above you. It's also quite easy to understand how the mind makes such an apparition enormous. When you meet one by surprise, it's huge.
 
bruto said:
No doubt at all? It could have been a snowy owl if it was in the right place. Snowy owls have been migrating further south some winters. I saw a couple a few years ago down in Vermont, and even got good pictures of one. Or it could have been a great horned owl. We rarely see them but we hear them at night.

I do, however, agree that being swooped by an owl at dusk or dark is quite an experience. So is just walking in the woods and suddenly spotting one above you. It's also quite easy to understand how the mind makes such an apparition enormous. When you meet one by surprise, it's huge.
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People don't seem to realize how large owls can be. Those things can be huge! When I lived in Houston I saw one sitting on a fence, scoping out my beagle puppy who was romping in the back yard.
http://houstonarboretum.org/2015/05/owls-of-houston/
 
I believe it was a barred owl because that's what I hear around here in SC and we have the largest urban barred owl population in the country just 80 miles north of us. It's hard to say, since all I saw was the underside of it.
 
Jodie said:
I believe it was a barred owl because that's what I hear around here in SC and we have the largest urban barred owl population in the country just 80 miles north of us. It's hard to say, since all I saw was the underside of it.
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It's the likeliest, both in frequency and behavior, and I'd agree. Only disputing the "no doubt" part.
 
Feathers and fear don't belong in the same sentence. Unless we're in our little alternate reality mode.

Anyway, I better get back to my trading. I'm in the Flatiron building, NYC. Manage a small portfolio of steel company paper for Berkshire-Hathaway. Did I tell you about my cousin, one of the Rockefeller's?
 
AlaskaBushPilot said:
Feathers and fear don't belong in the same sentence. Unless we're in our little alternate reality mode.

Anyway, I better get back to my trading. I'm in the Flatiron building, NYC. Manage a small portfolio of steel company paper for Berkshire-Hathaway. Did I tell you about my cousin, one of the Rockefeller's?
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Fear is relative, I think. I've been very startled by owls. They are very big and can be very unexpected. No doubt they're nothing to the grizzlies and wolves that stalk you and eat you piece by piece while you scream, but the sudden appearance of a big owl can certainly make you jump out of your skin.
 
That's why it is important the gamer give up on the tactics learned at University of Bigfoot, not the pretense that they believe in bigfoot.

Like abusing the English language. A bigfoot hunting expedition is a drive to the town green. A good shot is one that has 0% kill rate. "I saw a bird" is converted into the worst thing that could happen to someone.

Look across your life and pick the thing that made you most afraid. For me, it is a pretty common human experience - your child vanishing, and the increasing level of panic as you search in vain.

If you are too lazy and cowardly to take on dramatic experiences, then just make them up. There isn't a lot of difference between fabricating an event entirely vs. abusing the English language as much as an Alternate Reality Gamer does.
 
I can easily see how that could happen if you aren't used to being outdoors.
 
Ah yes, plausible deniability. It is just so reasonable that we systematically substitute melodramatic terms for the correct terms, salt the story with things that didn't actually happen, exaggerate the distances, the size of the animal, etc.

It's so easy if you aren't used to big cities. You mistake yourself for Donald Trump, and a subway entrance for a mastodon lair. A block becomes twenty miles and a taxicab is the space shuttle.

The melodramatic exaggerations we just made are really nothing but trivial little honest mistakes anyone could make. That's why everyone is a fabulist.
 
Yes, we are the worst at following our own advice. I was referring to the comment that the owl wanted a drag.
 
Jodie said:
You mean like your posts?
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I rarely respond to gaming posts directed at me, but I don't actually tell many stories. But I provide pretty good photo evidence for them like what follows. About a half hour ago I took this picture of my son's hand inside a grizzly bear print about 200 feet from our front door:

Hand_zpsyawrbwsa.jpg


I have about seven pictures including one with the wife and kids aimed directly at the front door so the distance can be checked. Ask me for that and I'll post it.

But the black bear story, lol. Here's a real one. I woke up one night to what I thought was an earthquake. I ran downstairs, about to go out the front door. That's my earthquake routine. But as I got to the door I realized something bigger than me was pushing on the logs. There's three bear hides in this next shot. Two grizzly and one black. You've seen a bigger grizzly I have inside the cabin. These are all salted and are keeping just fine out in my shop. A caribou rack and a moose rack there too. Got way too much of this stuff.

IMG_0029_zpsujykbs4r.jpg


I had seen him before. Watching me. He could see I pushed on the front of the cabin to get in. But he didn't really understand how doors work. He was pushing too high up. So he was working his way across the cabin pushing. I got what I figured was best to plug a hole in him with and when he was right over the front door I opened it. Put it in his chest and fired.

He sat down. Looked both ways like he was confused. He didn't look at me or acknowledge my presence. So I shot him again. This time he lurched up sideways, took a stumbling bound, and fell pretty much dead on the woodpile. I figure I hit a rib that shattered on that second shot.

Black bear claws aren't very big. But they're big enough to command your attention when they are trying to get in the front door.

IMG_0030_zps7lwnvgne.jpg


Sorry about the dirty hands. We're putting wood up every day for the winter right now. But to the point, no I don't use melodramatic terms where they don't belong.

We aren't scared of this grizzly hunting so close. We are paying attention, lol - but not over dramatizing. I was more worried about what I thought was an earthquake in this story above, and when it turned out to be a bear I remember thinking "are you kidding me? That black bastard is trying to get in. What are we going to shoot him with..." Not fear.

You don't have cell phone pictures of an event numerous people supposedly witnessed because it didn't happen.
 
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