1) Get Attacked By A Weak Animal
When you tell your friends that you survived an animal attack, they’ll be too jazzed up to think about asking exactly what kind of animal it was, right? They’ll assume you fought off a ferocious bear, right?. No one will ever know that you were chased away from your car screaming in terror by a small chipmunk, right? Wrong. Dead wrong. They have definitely seen video footage of that exact thing happening. Even if you decide to stand your ground and fight you really have to ask yourself if you’ll feel good letting everyone know that you knocked out a squirrel?
2) Play Dead
Let’s say you get attacked by a leopard. You weigh your options and, finding yourself without leopard mace to ward the leopard off, quickly decide to play dead. As the leopard leaves, you congratulate yourself on your cunning. Don’t get cocky. You may have survived the initial attack but what happens when your death scene is so convincing that a vulture swoops down to tear the meat from your bones? Your instinct will most likely be to play dead once again. That will mean your actual death. Worse still, you may walk away from the leopard attack unscathed only to have your friends ruthlessly critique your performance. “Not very convincing,” they’ll all say.
3) Stage An Animal Attack
At first glance, a staged animal attack certainly seems ideal. You’re in control of every part of the attack. No more wandering aimlessly in the forest for hours only to finally be set on by one lousy weasel. Maybe you want to be attacked by fifteen venomous snakes and come out on top? Whatever you like, Mr. Producer. However, you’ll always have to live with the fact that it wasn’t real. Yes, you have a high resolution video of the “attack” you can share on social media but you’ll always know that the stuntman was the one who did most of the more dangerous stuff and the snakes were technically devenomized first then replaced entirely with CGI snakes when they creeped you out a little on set.
4) Pretend To Be An Animal Yourself
If you find yourself in the harsh northern tundra, completely surrounded by hungry wolves you might think that howling at the moon and adopting a wolf-like posture will increase your likelihood of being accepted into the pack and surviving the attack. You’d be right to think that. What you fail to take into account, is the awkward moment when you have to exit the wolf den later on. Imagine your humiliation when you explain that you’re not, in fact, a wolf at all and haven’t even been raised by wolves.
5) A Verbal Altercation
If a dog barks at you, that is technically an attack. However, scolding a small dog until it gets bored and disengages isn’t exactly an impressive move. When your friends recount their harrowing physical escape from a rabid honey badger, suddenly your story about telling a wiener dog that it’s “bad” until it lost interest in you won’t seem quite so interesting. Furthermore, many animals are incapable of verbalizing at all. If you get ambushed by a crab or worm and try to talk your way out of it, all people will see is you begging for your life as the animal attacking you continues the assault, too cool to respond.
6) Offer Up A Friend
If you’ve been spotted by a ravenous jaguar and an attack seems imminent, it might seem like a good idea to throw your pal into the ferocious cat’s eagerly awaiting jaws then flee into the night. Yes, you will most likely survive the attack so points for that but imagine trying to explain this to the grieving family afterwards. “Uh, I guess the jaguar just caught up to him first,” you’ll stammer out, eyes darting around the room to avoid their skeptical, scrutinizing gaze. “Yes, I know he was an Olympic medalist in both sprinting and distance running. Yes, I realize that I’m incredibly out of shape. No, those marks on his arms aren’t from me grabbing and tossing him to the jaguar. Probably just a birthmark you never noticed.”
7) In The Sea
Unlike a land animal attack, there is no non-embarrassing way to escape an attack by a sea creature. Best case scenario, you drown and get pulled under the surface, never to be seen again. The number one thing that your friends will say after an attack from literally any sea animal is “Shouldn’t have been in the water in the first place.” There is no way to avoid this. As a potential bonus debasement, there’s a good chance your bathing suit will be torn off and possibly held aloft on a horn (if attacked by a narwhal) or tusk (if attacked by a walrus). Your friends may feign sympathy when you tell them about the attack but they’ll forever remember the hilarious way that your genitals were flopping around when the lifeguard dragged you out of the water.