A deer, multiple frogs, several thousand fireflies and something else. It was already very dark when I was silently drifting along on a nice soft mossy path, enjoying the firefly show left and right and in front of me. I then heard some rustling about 30 meters in the distance in the shrubs. I thought that I must have scared up a deer. But it kept on rustling without any worries. And I closed in without seeing anything.
Only when I heard the quick oink from just 10 meters away, I froze. Shit, no deer, but a boar! Suddenly, I was the one who was scared. It probably hadn’t noticed me before. But did it notice me now? Was that grunt a warning or just completely unrelated? The rustling appeared to slowly come closer. What if there were also piglets around? I couldn’t figure out how many boars there were. Maybe just one, possibly more. A wild boar easily rips a hunting dog apart, so I didn’t want to take any chances and decided I will not wait for them to eventually pass me behind the brush in just a hand full of meters, so I can keep on going. While I was just turning around, I heard another oink and was frighened to death. I ran 20 meters, before calming down a little bit. I listened for half a second and nobody was following me. Phew. I then walked back the path.
What an adventure, I tell you. That was my second (or maybe third?) wild boar encounter in the woods ever. A hell lot more scary at night than during daylight when you can actually see something.