What’s the coolest animal you’ve seen in the wild?

A porcupine in a tree

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I lived in a seaside village in Korea. Sometimes I'd stay up all night and go down to the low cliffs to watch the sun rise.

Once, just as I was starting to head home, I heard a far-off splash and turned to look. I thought it was fish, but then I realized it was dolphins. They were splashing around kind of randomly.

Within seconds, the dolphins arranged themselves in rows and started swimming in my direction.

Then they paraded past, right in front of me. There were about 50 of them. I marveled at the perfect semicircles their bodies made each time they rose out of the water.

When they'd all gone past, they turned and swam out to deeper water again.

I mentioned this to a local, and he said, "No, you don't see groups of dolphins around here. You might see one or two."
 
I think I posted this before - I had seen a huge turtle at least five feet wide, maybe more, when fishing off of a bridge in Florida many moons ago. At first, I thought it was a boat coming toward the bridge, that's how large it was. I just sat there and looked, feeling mesmerized as it slowly made its way under the bridge.
 
Here in the states, it would have been a magnificent elk that I saw as a kid. It was standing on the side or the road in northern Idaho.

In Africa it would have been a rhino that cam uncomfortably close to the VW van that I was riding in. The elephants and lions that I saw were way off in the distance.

At sea, it would have been the playful dolphins. When we slowed down, I could stand back on the fantail, look down, and watch them dive through the blade of our slowly turning screw. They could keep this up for hours. I was also enthralled with watching the pods of whales that we came across.

But the animal that I would most like to see is a Jaguar, but not up close and personal.
 
I've seen several eagles, moose and bears pretty regular on several fishing trips to northern Canada and the NWT.

Out doing jungle survival training in Panama we came across a sloth and I've got pictures of it here someplace........one fella wanted to kill it just for the hell of it and I looked him straight in the eyes and told him that if he even tried that I'd shove that machete that he was holding up his a$$, apparently he could tell that I was dead serious and walked away.

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A whale, don't know what kind, deep sea fishing in the Marianas. A black bear walking across my front yard in Oklahoma. A bobcat that came around the side of the house when I was sitting on the back porch. He came within 5 feet of me, I held my breath and didn't move, and he never realized I was there.
 
When we spent time up on the mountain a few years back, the cabin was in the thick of woods. We heard some activity at night in the cabin, so the next day, we went and got some mice pellets (that's all I could find in the nearby small town). The following morning, those pellets were missing, but a while later, I discovered the pellets had been placed in some boots in the closet! I was flabbergasted. Never knew a mouse that smart! So one day, I was outside on the porch sweeping, when this large rodent that was a cross between a squirrel and a bunny came by on the porch, stopped and stared at me with its large doe-like eyes for a moment. I stared back wondering what the heck it was. He sped on. Never saw it again. I think it was the rodent that had confiscated the pellets and placed them in the boots.
 
Our son's been building on our 8 acre Idaho retreat & put up a tree camera, captured a photo of these young visitors.
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Same camera during daylight.
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And I thought I only had to watch for rattlers!

I've been there many times watching mule deer, quail, black bear and wild turkeys, but nothing as unsettling as these.
 
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