DISCLAIMER - I am not planning on fighting a pelican.
there’s a brown pelican that hangs out on the railing of a very narrow portion of a boardwalk nearby. the only reason it makes me nervous is because it’s huge, but their nails look short, and their beaks are pointed, but curved downwards so they would have to try to bite me with that long thing instead of pecking me.
like, if a bird capable of clawing or eating my eyes out attacked my face, I’d honestly have no qualms about killing it immediately. but if I ever get attacked by a pelican, it looks like I could just kind of hold it off without having to hurt it. am I right in that?
Does the pelican have a gun?
idk but in this neighborhood, probably
Do you have ready access to a banana?
no but I can print a picture of one
Pelicans are naturally offended by bananas, a printout might work but a pocket banana is a solid distraction technique so you can get it pinned.
they couldn’t be naturally offended by bananas, as what we recognize as a banana is completely man-made. they must be unnaturally offended by it, or we bred the banana in such a way that it looks exactly like something that used to be offended by
probably pelican dildos.
They’re offended by their existence as an abomination on the natural order of things, pelicans are extremely strict in their interpretation of scientific ethics and their adherence to it.
then why do they keep trying to eat things that are bigger than them
I don’t know if he’d fuck you per se. But he might make sweet sweet love to you
Cue the Barry manilow
Who in the sweet fuck is boning to Barry Manilow?!
this person was obviously seeing your mother last night
She’s dead, so this only deepens my curiosity.
society as a whole has agreed that “yo momma” jokes are not actually about the other party’s mother. people like you who break that convention gets this
Real answer?
Don’t fight the pelican. The law is on their side, for one thing.
No I don’t think you could hold it away from you without hurting it or you. No I don’t think it has any intention of harming you, unless you are a fish. Walk on by, it will either just sit there or fly away.
Bird law in this country is not governed by reason.
lol, this is just a great sentence is a great post
Why is this comment section full of people ridiculing the question in a community called “no stupid questions”? Like, isn’t the entire point here to be able to ask questions that you worry might be stupid without being ridiculed for it?
Every dedicated “ask <xyz-style> questions” community I’ve ever participated in has had a nonzero amount of users who seem to only show up to bitch and moan that, shock! people are asking <xyz-style> questions. I don’t get it either.
Pelicans have stupid stumpy little legs, basically no talons because they have webbed ducklike feet, and are able to apply very little biting force with their beaks due to the length. Pelicans feed by scooping things up and swallowing them whole. They don’t bite, tear, or chew. I’ve never seen one try to peck anything. They’re certainly not built for that.
If you grabbed a pelican by the beak I think there is vanishingly little it could actually do to you aside from squirming and flapping feathers all over the place. You should be fairly clear to yeet the thing into the ocean at your own convenience.
I left this open for a while and forgot what post I was reading when I returned, so I misread your first sentence as “politicians” rather than pelicans…
And lemme tell you, that was a quality chuckle.
I’ll gladly throw a politicican beak first, just point me in the right direction!
I reread the post replacing “pelican” with “politician”. I haven’t laughed this much in weeks. Thank you.
Pelicans have hollow bones. You’d be able to easily break it in half if there was a real fight.
It’s be hard to fight what you can’t see.
Ok so my experience comes from catching chickens and clawed ducks as a child, so assuming you’re a full grown adult, and this chart, the ratios are the same.
You gotta catch them from surprise, from the back, but it sounds like you’re already in the fight if shit goes down. The beak is your issue. The wings are just a distraction. Get the pelican bastard from the neck, as high as possible if you can and try to grab the legs. ChatGPT says they don’t really use their legs to fight, but worst case, start swinging it. I bet once you clamp on the beak, it’ll be hard for it to open. Like how alligators can chomp down, but have trouble opening. Once it’s subdued, it might stay freaked out for a while. You just gotta hold it until it accepts defeat.
Then take it to your mom and she’ll take the head and feathers off for dinner.
Best of luck brother.
What’s it going to do? Swallow you? Lmao. It can try. I don’t see how it can intentionaly hurt an actual human.
You can never plan to fight a pelican. It just happens. We’ve all been there.
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right punch the pelican in the face with another pelican. that’s how you win
I haven’t. Did I miss much?
I’ve been attached by geese though.
Emotionally or physically?
Rejection hurts 🤕
Not as much as geese bites. They’re vicious medium sized bastards.
*physical rejection 😔
I don’t live in a place that’s even remotely hospitable for pelicans but you’re right. It just kind of happens sometimes. Like a fact of life
it’s a long-standing tradition. all official pelican fights must be a surprise
probably not going to attack you, but if it does you should be ok because you are bigger and stronger
that’s why I asked how badly it would fuck me up, not whether I would win or lose.
that’s why I said you’d be ok
Most likely the worst it would do is some light scratches and bites, but that beak tip could tear up some skin if it scrapes across the skin like a box cutter knife. Those beak tips are surprisingly sharp.
But it would all be superficial from the claws and beak. The main danger would be from bacteria and other pathogens causing infections if those wounds aren’t cleaned.
In other words, the beak is a “Short Sword of poison +1”?
Switchblade of Infection +1
OP is going to get so rekt’d.
I wouldn’t worry to much about pelicans. Fun fact - pelicans try to eat people sometimes. They basically try to eat every animal, because they have no sense of scale for their food they can swallow. And they don’t risk much by trying - most large animals have the same incredulous reaction we do
They are not very bright birds nor very quick ones. They are also not very agile. And as a bird, they have hollow bones and you could kill them with a solid fist to the chest… I once saw the aftermath of two shin high dogs tearing one apart. On a small balcony. There was blood everywhere… The dogs were covered in it, completely uninjured and very pleased with themselves
I wouldn’t worry, even if they have the sharp bits that could injure you, they lack the instincts to use them properly
May I subscribe to Pelican Facts?
there’s a video out there of one trying to eat a duck
And a capybara
And a pigeon. It succeeds in that one.
there’s one of a Holstein cow successfully eating baby chickens.
There’s more than one video of horses eating a chick.
Um… are we talking about in Mexico? Because 40 year old virgin gave little me so many horrible thoughts.
Oh, dear. No, I meant like a baby chicken. It’s apparently a reasonably common thing.
There aren’t many videos out there of creatures trying to eat a capybara.
It takes some ferocious kind of predator to even attempt it.
capybara get eaten in the wild all the time. average lifespan of a wild one is 4 years, and the primary cause of death is predation. they can live 10 years in captivity
their main form of defense is reproducing about as quickly as rabbits. they are sometimes competition for grazing land, but South Americans usually farm them if they’re a pest, rather than exterminating them, as they are very good meat animals. the Catholic Church classifies them as fish, so the more Catholic of community is, the more of them they’re eating (Catholics aren’t allowed to eat meat on friday, and somebody along the way decided fish weren’t meat. it wasn’t unusual to write the Vatican with a description vague enough to get something declared a fish; both the capybara and beaver were classified as fish because the people submitting the request just emphasized the amount of their lives they spend in the water), and there’s a medicinal grease produced from their skin that they use like petroleum jelly.
but South Americans usually farm them if they’re a pest, rather than exterminating them, as they are very good meat animals
As a South American… Eww! Are you getting your facts from ChatGPT?
Catholics aren’t allowed to eat meat on friday
Again, as somebody that was grown catholic, where are you getting that from?
Mostly large snakes and jaguars eat them. Otherwise, nothing is really a danger.
the first fact came from the Bristol Zoo, and the second from Archbishop Bernard Hebda.
You might want to check that first source again.
About the second one… WTF? You’d wish to consult your Catholic traditions from some Catholic authority. Not whatever that is. But the first paragraph is almost normal, stick to it.
Again, as somebody that was grown catholic, where are you getting that from?
Then, like most catholics in the wild, you don’t have much grasp of the tenets of the religion. It’s weird that I’m the only one in my family who actually remembers anything from the catechism classes, but it seems standard in my see (that I’m not a part of anymore, but when I was forced to attend mass and such) that no one has any idea of the various positions of the faith espoused by the church. Catholicism is one of the interesting christian sects because it actually has a long history of ‘reasoning’ its way to the conclusions that shape the beliefs, and its sort of sad that the average person claiming catholicism as their religion knows so little of it.
Anyway, back to the original point: No meat on Fridays has been a thing for a very long time, in the actual annals of the religion’s leaders. Go look at the council of Trent and their declarations. For the philosophy of it, read Thomas Aquinas and his (now) laughable idea: The idea that fish don’t inherit original sin because they don’t have sex. For the practical reasons, go read the NPR article that details some of the history behind it.
I need to find this.
It depends. How exactly do you expect to find yourself up in a fight with a pelican?
i dunno man, use your imagination. maybe I wandered too close to its nest
Can you please write a review on Google or something? I would love to know how you would rate the Pelican’s performance in your upcoming battle.
does the pelican have a business where i can leave such a review?
Maybe that one?
Edit: They promise this on their website : “We deliver award-winning customer service by empowering our people to recognise the needs of our customers”.
I have no idea, but I really hope some genius on Lemmy creates a simulation of this fight so we can all have a great time watching it.
This is what gen AI was born for
There you go!
Not many people know that even the God of War himself needs a wingman
AI still struggling with hands I see
Yeah. It’s better than it used to be- you can get a reasonable output far easier than you could previously, but if it’s going to fuck up anything it’s going to fuck up the hands.
