Not Getting Mauled By Animals Feels Like It's Gotten Way More Complicated Than It Needs To Be

The weather is starting to get nicer in most of the country which means that people will be spending increasing amounts of time outside in nature.

The same nature where animals that can attack you live.

As such, this is a good time to brush up on what to do if you bump into some kind of nasty critter that wants to do you harm.

Here's the problem: I keep getting mixed messages, so I have no idea what I'm supposed to do, and a recent article from BBC News did not help matters.

The piece discussed a rise in mountain lion attacks and what to do if you stumble across one. 

"We recommend facing the lion, making yourself tall, shouting, waving arms and generally making yourself appear obvious," wildlife ecologist Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant said. "Then back away while facing the animal, slowly, making noise and waving your arms or clothing the whole time."

If that doesn't work? Wynn-Grant said "fighting back as hard as possible" is your best bet.

No problemo, Doc.

They mentioned a nice little tidbit of information that this exact playbook works for black bears too… but not all bears.

It's easy to tell a black bear from a grizzly bear in the sunlight, but imagine one is rushing toward you in the middle of the night while you're trying to pee on an oak tree. Not so easy then, is it? (Getty Images)

You Have To Know Your Bears If You Want To Survive An Attack

While black bears frighten easily, grizzly bears don't.

In fact, the BBC article said trying to scare them away is a bad idea.

And this is what worries me: You're telling me I have to be able to identify different species of bears at a moment's notice, otherwise, it rips my trachea out?

I mean, yeah, under perfect conditions I could suss out a grizzly from a black bear, but sometimes their fur can be different colors.

But imagine being out in the woods at night with a few beers in you and some giant member of the Ursidae family comes flying through the trees right at you. Think you could identify it and pick the right defensive strategy?

You may as well rip your own arms off and save it the time because you're going to pick wrong.

You have to make a split-second decision to play dead or blast it in the face with an air horn. It either works or you wind up doing your best impression of Leonardo DiCaprio in The Revenant.

We need to figure out a one-size-fits-all approach to thwarting animal attacks. A stop-drop-and-roll approach that everyone will remember as they're being attacked. 

I've always argued punching them in the nose is the answer. That's what they tell you to do with sharks and it works. I don't think there's any animal on earth that would enjoy taking a shot to the sniffer.

But even then, I feel like some animals would just take that as a challenge.

Unfortunately, there's no way to solve this riddle aside from trial and error. People just have to try things as they're getting attacked by animals and maybe something will work.

Unless we can get some volunteers to try everything from clapping to distracting the attacking animal with juggling or ventriloquism to blasting the music of Chuck Manigone to bore the animal to sleep, we'll never get a universal solution to animal attacks.

I don't think we find too many takers…

For now, it may be best to just steer clear of the woods entirely.