Came with the job at the time,so just got on with it. A few years later I got to the gate at Lisbon for a flight to Amsterdam and couldn't make myself board the plane..had three domestic flights the previous day on Spanish airlines,all horrible. Ended up hiring a car and driving to Santander to catch a ferry back to Blighty,but lost the gig as it took me 3 days in total to catch up with the tour. Allright now though,got my PPL about 10 years ago....better to be at the controls than cooped up in the back...
They are indeed cuties. But they could also rip chunks off you if they so wished. Open water swimming is a bugger if something goes wrong. You can't just hop out and hail a taxi.
yip,quite a lot. had two mates recently had there garden ponds raided recently, expensive carp taken. there not that close to the sea ether. save the seal,save the otter my ass. there every where.got beavers now too. just down the road from oban.
Had lots of near misses with my old job, people doing things they shouldn't, but you just get on with it. However the one time that really sticks in my memory was 1 week after my son was born he was admitted into Birmingham children's hospital with liver failure, the specialist didn't know what was wrong with him his blood wouldn't clot so they couldn't do a transplant and we were told to spend as much time with him as possible as he was likely to die. He was diagnosed as galactoseamic and his recovery was remarkable. But for 2 weeks I was the most frightened scared distressed helpless and angry that I have ever been.
LOL. A Russian bloke was killed by a beaver not that long ago. Big teeth are big teeth, whatever package they come in. :Hilarious: Fucking sea otter! OMG.
The time I was by far the most scared was diving in the Maldives. 25m down, surrounded by reef fishes. In a split second (literally) there was not a fish to be seen. In that same second, there was a sound like a thunderclap (bearing in mind that the only sound you hear underwater generally is the sound of your bubbles and possibly the scrunching of the parrot fish gnawing the coral). I turned around in the direction of the sound and there was a large grey reef shark that had just shut its jaws. It was very close to some other divers and I thought it had just attacked someone. Reef fish can hide in the reef. Large divers can't. Did I feel exposed? You can't just surface, and if you stay where you are, your air will run out. It runs out a lot faster when your heart is beating at its maximum rate. And when you try to surface, slowly, you will be very exposed for quite some time in mid water. Even the diving instructor looked frightened. That shark and another one then circled around our coral block for about 5 minutes. They say there has never been a shark attack in the Maldives, but at the time, that wasn't an especially comforting thought. Back on the boat, it transpired that the shark had just bitten a large tuna in half and wasn't attacking us at all. Of course. There was plenty of nervous laughter. You are aware underwater that there isn't a whole lot you can do about being attacked by an animal that is infinitely more suited to the environment than you are, but of course, such attacks are indeed almost unheard of, unprovoked. The event didn't put me off at all, especially when I discovered that the danger it seemed we were in wasn't real. But sharks don't normally do that much hunting in broad daylight and when they do, large divers aren't really on the menu. But the grey reef shark can be territorial (especially in the Caribbean) so you don't want to push your luck if you meet a pissed off one.
Yup, its the 'what's gonna happen next' that scares us. Plus the fact you are not in control. In the 80's when we were all tearing about on LC's I hated going pillion. The control thing, plus we were all crackers. I was recently working on a rig off Nigeria and the bull sharks lurking around that were frightening. Especially when lobbing in scraps from the galley. Extremely impressive. If that rig lit up I would have had to burn to death I'm afraid. Jumping off was not an option....
