Ran into a porcupine in the Tetons in the middle of the night on a trail heading into garnet canyon. There was nowhere for it or me to go to the side of the trail so it slowly chased us back down the trail a ways. I wasn’t super scared as it was fairly easy to keep your distance from, but still an animal full of quills kept coming towards us.

Ran into a few moose while fishing in idaho and that was the most nervous I’ve ever been around any animal. Both times I didn’t know they were there until I was practically right on them as one was laying in the grass/bushes on the shoreline while I was crossing the river and the other time was wading in water when I popped through some bushes and it was right there a few feet away.

The stupid marmot woke me up as I heard something like right in our tent vestibule which scared me waking me in a disoriented state up thinking something else was trying to get in. I looked out and saw it was a marmot and it had taken my trekking pole and bolted off into the trees and down this steep slope off the ridge we camped on. With the pole it made a lot more ruckus to sound quite a bit bigger that I wouldn’t have thought large rodent. With no time to really even contemplate what was happening and still riding adrenaline, I had to run out in the rain without any shoes on to get it back before he took it who knows where to chew on the wrist straps that had salt from sweat in them. I was slipping on the wet heather and grass down the ridge to chase it down and almost biffed it in the process. Ridiculous.