Superiority of Humans Over Animals - Are Some of us Prone to Attack

I have a theory that some people in the world are particularly susceptible to spontaneous animal attacks. Something about them transmits the wrong signals and animals respond unfavorably to them.

I have concluded that I am one of those people. In my time I have been attacked viciously by a German Shepherd owned by a particularly anti social character who kept the animal as a guard dog, and then half starved it to further hone it's aggression; I have also been badly bitten by a one armed gibbon, again kept as a pet by a demented woman who assured me of his docile nature before I went near him.

I was given a plate of food to put down on the floor of the gibbon's cage but before I could put the plate down anywhere the ape grabbed me around the throat and began shaking me about, finally sinking his yellow teeth into the side of my leg and tearing out a chunk of my best corduroy trousers. I learned very quickly that it is pointless to try to fight back when confronted by an angry gibbon, because their arms are longer than ours, but thankfully he only had one and failed to prevent me from escaping when I slammed the cage door on his good paw.

In the early seventies, I lived with my nutty parents in a small Indonesian community some hours drive from Jakarta in a hilly tea plantation region. Our villa was large and comfortable and the sitting room was open to the terraces and the garden. One night, as I was sitting on the rug before the fire, reading my book and minding my own business, I felt a thump on my left shoulder. I turned my head and came face to face with a bug-eyed, bright green frog, commonly known as Rhacophorus Nigorpalmatus. This frog is equipped with large, webbed feet which enable it to glide in flight and it can zoom from one object to another at an alarming speed.

My blood freezing screams brought servants running and my father emerged from his study wielding his badminton racket, affectionately termed his 'bat bat,' as he used it to swat the bats which swooped upon our dining table on the terrace. We were unaware at the time that flying frogs use their webbed and suckered feet to cling to a moving surface, which by now I certainly was. I ran screaming all around the house and garden until eventually I was rugby tackled by the house boy. He whipped a cigarette lighter out of his pocket, and flashed the flame in front of Kermit who immediately released his vice-like grip on my shoulder and flew off into the night.

I have also been bitten by my Aunt's over weaned and insufferable Pekinese dog. In the sixties, pooper - scooping was rarely practiced except by known eccentrics, yet my Aunt seemed to view pooper-scooping as some sort of macabre hobby, and she followed dearest Fluff around with a plastic carrier bag, a supply of paper tissues, a spray deodorant (don't ask) and a packet of wet wipes. She would then clean good old Fluff's bottom after each minor bowel evacuation, while Fluff did his best to bite off her hand. Aaah, how sweet.

When it came to my turn to take Fluff for his constitutional, I was not quite so practiced as my Aunt at avoiding the little bastard's razor sharp teeth and he sank them into my thumb. I carry the scar to this day.