An Animal Bigger than a Big Dog

I made a list of creatures bigger than a dog, thinking the list would spark my imagination about what particular animal to choose to write about. The prompt focused on size, thus so did. I. My list stuck first to typical large creatures, often found in zoos or the wilderness, then to aquatic life, and finally too farmyard animals. When you think about it, there are a lot of really large creatures that share the Earth with us. It is a privilege to see them in their natural habitat, and a danger too—both to us and to them.

My first impulse was to write about the cows at my Grandpa’s dairy farm that panicked me when I was 8 or 10. They started towards me when I moved and the faster I ran, the faster they went. But I already wrote about that, and I survived. As a child I was introduced to ponies, horses and camels, and rode all of them on special occasions, and I have movies and photos to prove it! So, no need to write more about them.

The animals in the ocean come in all sizes, and the largest are formidable. I have gone scuba diving for many years, encountering a menagerie of mammals and fish and crustaceans. Those larger than a large dog were the easiest to spot, and possibly scary as well. On a shore dive in Bonaire, we spotted and swam with a Sea Sunfish. It was gargantuan and very peculiar looking, and totally benign and uninterested in us. It was black/dark gray and curiously shaped, like it had been inflated, all rounded edges. It lolled around a wreck we were diving to, in no hurry, nor were we. I had to look it up in our fish guides when we were back on land. Unforgettable, probably 9-10 feet high and long, a flattish disk shape.

Our 2nd trip to Mexico was a continuing education deal with whale watching on the side. We went to Magdalena Bay on the West Coast, on the Baja peninsula. The California gray whales spend half the year there to mate and have calves. Baby whales are protected in the bay, and make watching easy because they must surface every 5-10 minutes to breathe. Adults can stay under much longer, so are harder to see. We had kayaks and pangas, big fiberglass open boats, to ride on the water. The whales didn’t come near us in the kayaks, but were very comfortable with the sound of the panga’s motor. One day, our guide asked us if we wanted to touch a whale. We said ok, as we headed out, not believing there was any chance. But, sure enough, one mother allowed her calf to approach the boat, and the guide patted her. Her size and nearness to the boat made the rest of us fearful that she would tip us over, so we backed away and missed our opportunity. Even baby whales are huge! The interaction between the mothers and babies was so beautiful, we will never forget it. We slept in tents, got sand in everything, and swam in saltwater to clean up. It was the time of Desert Storm, so gave us a small taste of desert living that the soldiers might also have experienced. We returned to a hotel for one night on our way back home, and even after long showers, we still left sand on our sheets, and took some home in our clothing as well. The whale experience stuck with us, so that we look for other opportunities to see other types whenever we travel.

Then there are the fearsome giants of the ocean. I’m thinking of sharks and toothed whales and giant squid. We haven’t gotten up close and personal to anything terribly scary. In reefs, we stick close to the dive guide and the smaller reef side stuff. Thank goodness we don’t taste very good. We avoid harassing moray eels, and they leave us alone, as do the sharks, so far. Turtles can come large enough to dwarf a dog, too, but they are shy and tend to swim away when they see our bubbles. I do love seeing them in the ocean, where they move without difficulty. My dream is to someday observe a hatching of baby turtles, and help protect them in their race to the water and comparative safety. Turtles have made increased in the past 2+ decades since we began diving. Now we see them all the time. When we started diving, it was rare to see any.

Closer to home, we have mule and white-tail deer, as well as moose, for wildlife viewing. The South Hill in Spokane has turkeys, though they aren’t quite large enough to fit this prompt, they do travel in flocks.

Some of our local critters only come out at night, so we rarely catch sight of them. Our neighbor has spotted cougars in the night. The raptors around tend to me too small to qualify for this essay, though it’s hard to tell with bald eagles. Close up, they are pretty sizable!. Porcupines, badgers and owls tend to be out at night, so I miss seeing them too, most of the time. Amazing to think about the natural world all around us, which our senses only know of sporadically.

I’m reading an incredible book by Ed Yong called The Immense World. It examines the senses of animals and compares in to human senses. The pictures of what a dog sees versus what we see in mind blowing! As humans, we expect every other animal to match us in how and what it sees, hears, tastes and it is a shock to try to imagine experiencing reality in a totally different fashion! When we scuba dive, we get just a small whiff of a different world than our usual one. This book takes us even farther.

There, a rambling stream of consciousness essay, mostly about animals bigger than dogs. The end.