My way of honing the old steath skills was to sneak up on cats and wild animals and see how close I could get before they knew I was there. I once spent about 15 or 20 minutes creeping up on a beaver that was sitting by the edge of the pond, nibbling on branches. He suspected something was up, because every now and then he got nervous and looked all over the place, but I would freeze when he did that. After awhile he would relax and go back to chewing on his branches. So...I finally got about 2 feet away from that beaver, and I'm looking right at his big fat furry rump, and he's chewing away contentedly. I thought about pinching his tail...thought better of it...and instead bounced a small pebble off his tail. He shot up in the air and hit the water like a bomb. HUGE SPLASH and TAIL SLAP on the water!!!!!!!!!

It was one of the funniest darn things I have ever seen in my entire life.

About 2 minutes later he surfaced at the far side of the pond, and just floated there for a bit, staring at me like he simply couldn't believe it. Things like that just aren't supposed to happen. It's not in the beaver handbook.