Thread by @mikamckinnon

It appears we need a refresher on how bloody terrifying wildlife is in Canada.

Imagine a moose, or beaver, Canadian goose, polar bear, elk, lynx, or any other iconic animal.

It’s bigger, bites harder, & is way more aggressive than you‘re imagining. And it gives no fucks.

How tall are you? Great, bull moose are taller.

Bull moose are up to 7 feet at the SHOULDER. Moose are so big their eyes don’t reflect in car headlights at night because they’re TOO TALL.

BC highways even has pamphlets yelling about how big moose are:

Trudeau is calling Canada a moose.

If you piss a moose off, they charge, stomp, & gore (one dude took an antler through the eye to the brain! Ahhh!). That fuzz Colbert referenced? Here’s a moose eating his own velvet. Not cuddly!

I’m cutting the graphic details about moose + car collisions, but when several hundred kilos of pissed-off mammal is flung into a windshield or on to a car room, no one comes out ok. Just... Moose get the right-of-way.

Sweden gets it: www-esv.nhtsa.dot.gov/Proceedings/25…

But let’s talk about beavers. Round, funny tail, giggle-inducing innuendo, anal secretions that smell pretty & taste like vanilla. Nothing scary, right?

...they’re rodents with really big teeth,can hold their breath way too long, & have creepy-dexterous hands.

Again, edited for gore, just going to point out that anything that can BITE DOWN A TREE has no issues defending itself. It’s usually only fatal if they hit an artery. Or have rabies.

Did I mention beaver teeth are fortified with iron and NEVER STOP GROWING?

I’m grateful Alberta’s giant beaver is extinct, but the modern North American beaver is about the size of a pair of 3 year-olds strapped together with a big flappy tail & a vendetta against running water.

Did I mention they can parachute, nbd? Tactical error teaching them that.

Canadian geese: they won’t kill you directly, but you’ll be traumatized before they’re done.

Oh — and they’re big enough to kill you indirectly by birdstrike on aircraft.

Canadian geese are migratory grazers who travel in flocks.

Thus: they have “teeth,” a serrated tongue, powerful bite strength, up to a 6 foot wingspan, & hella muscles. They’re also seriously aggressive if you go near their chicks & will gang up on you.

Fuck modern dinosaurs.

Canada geese are the same size as a toddler, but half the weight. People think it’s cute for their kids to feed the geese right up until the goose has enough, hisses, and chases their terrified kiddo to an eternity of nightmares.

Pile in if you need to trauma-bond over geese.

You know how I love Juno, the spacecraft orbiting Jupiter that has a freaking titanium vault protecting its computers? That spacecraft is roughly the same size & mass as an adult male polar bear

I couldn’t include that in stories because people underestimate how damn big that is

Polar bears look all tiny next to tundra buggies right up until the moment you realize the wheels are human-sized. ...and even cute lil cubs are wheel-sized.

Adult male polar bears are up to the size of smart cars (at half the weight — “only” half a US ton!)

Polar bears consider the middle of nowhere with nothing around home, which tells you everything you need to know about their relentlessness, keen senses, & effectiveness as hunters.

Keeping them out of somewhere is understandably tricky: articles.extension.org/pages/8588/pol…

We also have cougars, rattlesnakes, more bears, wolves, coyotes, wolverines, lynx, elk, orca, owls, sharks, falcons, leatherback turtles, Pacific octopus, osprey, little brown bats, sea lions, walrus, & bugs.

Wildlife is awesome, but deserves respect. They can fuck you up.

And yet for all our choices of terrifying critters, nearly every Canadian will tell you the same thing:

Moose are the scariest.

Most common replies, in order:
1. "Moose are scary!" stories.
2. Canada good trauma-bonding.
3. Shock.
4. Canada & Australia are clearly kin.
5. "It's CANADA Goose, not Canadian!" (and yet no one corrects the "car room" to "car *roof")