Animals and Cycling

When you spend lots and LOTS of time on the road training you tend to see things that you never noticed before or didn't notice it as much.  One of those things is road kill.  On a bike it is a lot more up close and personal than when you see it in a car.

Road Kill I've seen:

• Rattle snakes (I stopped counting)
• Gardner snakes (or little snakes I don’t slow down enough to tell for sure)
• Deer 2  (1 had just been hit by a car and it was in town, 1 was out in the middle of no where and I smelled it before I saw it and when I looked over to see what it was there were maggots oozing out of the middle of it as if something had torn it’s middle out and just left the rest ewwwww I almost puked on this one)
• Squirrel
• Frogs
• A big green lizard that almost looked like an iguana definitely something not native to this area (this guy was so bright green that it made the blood look fake)
• Skunk
• Coyote

I much prefer to see them alive even if it can be scary.  Things I’ve come very close to while riding that was alive and moving

Maybe they just wanted to try out my bike!

• Bear (I tried to get my phone out of my back pocket while riding to get a pic of this guy then I realized what I was doing and figured I should just get the heck out of there!)
• Coyotes
• Fox (I think)
• Cows believe it or not these were the scariest because they were in my way crossing the road and I saw a car coming in the opposite direction I was so scared the car was going to honk and spook them and that I was going to be stampeded!!!
• Rabid dog – It came running after me and I tried to out run it since I was on a downhill and just as I thought I wasn’t going to be able to get away the poor thing hit a rock.  I tried calling animal control and they said they couldn’t come to that part because it wasn’t in their area.

Not me but someone very close to me came home one day from a ride and said they saw a penguin in the river!!  I said no that is impossible they would die in this heat.  Well they swore up and down it was a penguin hanging out in the river.  I said ok there is a zoo right by where you said so I guess call the non emergency police number.  I’m not sure if they were laughing or not but they said they’d look into it.  Then the next day when he called the zoo they said they don’t have penguins.  So determined to find out he went to the same path and told another cyclist.  The cyclist said he thought the same thing but then with closer inspection thought it was a insert bird name here (also not native) but still no penguin.  Thankfully this story didn’t make the news :-)

What animals have you seen while out training?