A few stories
I used to ride a horse for a woman who had had a back injury. She wanted her horse to get exercise but she also was just being nice to me in lending me the horse. The horse was huge - part draft horse - and her name was Venus. She loved her owner fervently. She hated me. She would take every opportunity to crush me against her stall wall and step on my feet. Once while riding, she took off at a gallop and wouldn't stop. She was headed directly at the side of a barn. I thought, "Well, she's certainly not going to run into the side of a barn just to get at me." I was wrong.

My mother-in-law's small green parrot once chased me relentlessy through a house. It followed me from room to room, fixing its beady eye at me and biting at my ankles. It seemed ridiculous but I couldn't make him stop and there was no place safe to stand or sit. My mother-in-law didn't believe me when I told her what was happening and only put the bird away to humor me.

At a city park in San Francisco, my two year old son went to feed a large grey goose, which picked him up by the shoulder, shook him and threw him on the ground. I later found out that this particular goose had a city ordinance protecting IT from molestation. Meh.

I was once playing with my dog in some woods near an abandoned quarry. We were racing around on paths through the thick brush, chasing each other and darting away. I was on one path and on an adjacent one I could hear her galloping. I ran as fast as I could to head her off where the two paths met. As I jumped into her path with my arms out and yelling "YAAHHH!" I found myself almost colliding with with a terrified white-tailed deer. For a moment we just stood face to face - staring and panting. Suddenly, it leapt past me and plunged down the side of the quarry and into the water at the bottom, swam the full length, vaulted up the other side and ran back into the woods. No, it certainly didn't attack me, and I didn't mean to attack it but I felt so bad when I realized that my dog and I had unknowingly been terrorizing the poor beast.
( Artamnesia, Fri 3 Jun 2005, 2:52, Reply)