Spackle?

(Spackle is the new Bob Hope.)

And with something more like earnest effort, I ask "What is a Beaver?"

alas, poor Walter, he forgot that one does not mess with the last of the dodos.

woodchuck

A leering, drunken stoat.

A wild boor. Um, I mean "boar."

elephant

Or perhaps a wolverine who wasn't bothering anyone till the clumsy two-foots came stomping through, bearing their pitiless metal implements, dragging wanton destruction in their monstrous wake, desecrating the groves of sweet nature, befouling all that is good and true and free of additives and preservatives. A wolverine that was only protecting its innocent, helpless young, hoping hopelessly for an end to senseless depedation, for a blossoming of a new, glorious and verdant future for all creatures with fur all about them.

(If one must depedate, one should do so mindfully.)

Karl Rove.

saber-toothed tiger

a rabbit (with big nasty teeth and claws)

skunk

The Most Dangerous Animal: Elgar's Paisley-Breasted Spit-Warbler

Bambi

That Bambi, he just chews em up and spits em out!

Where is BT to confirm my brooklessly bleeding beaver butt bite?

If not spackle, beaver or Karl Rove, I'll guess a mink.

The Most Dangerous Animal: Elgar's Paisley-Breasted Spit-Warbler

One's only warning is the blood-chilling trill of "Pomp and Circumstance" from the branches above.

No one has yet struck on the right beastie. Two clues: unlike the saber-toothed tiger, it's still a viable species (don't know if it's thriving or endangered, though)...and unlike the wolverine, the skunk, the stoat, and the Rove, it is not a member of the family Mustelidae.

I think beaver is the most likely, but to continue guessing:

raccoon

not a beaver! how about:

grizzly bear

I'm against striking beasties, except maybe this one . . .

Was the kid bitten by a homo sapiens?

(Which would be just one more reason we shouldn't let them marry. . . )

The Grizzly Bear is, of course, a famous biter. Loves to bite! Did you ever see that movie The Edge? Anthony Hopkins plays an author who uses his totally killer literary knowledge to get back at a big bear that's trying to bite him and Alec Baldwin when they go on some kind of camping trip in Alaska. The bear weighs like 4000 pounds but Anthony Hopkins has read all kinds of books, which makes him the perfect guy to kill the freaking bear with a STICK if you can believe it. Of course, later, Alec Baldwin proves (shockingly!) to be a scumbag who's sleeping with Anthony Hopkins' model wife. Man, it's like "Who saw THAT coming?" Head trip! So Anthony Hopkins continues to display his literary superiority and drops Alecs ass in a hole and then hauls his traitorous Baldwin carcass halfway back to civilization before the big sissy goes and dies on him anyway. It's a classic film which can frequently be seen in constant rotation on the TNT network, purveyours of first-class bear/Baldwin entertainment.

But no, it's not a grizzly bear. Or any other bear.

And, no, it wasn't a human being.

McNemany's Improved Duck

Or a chicken. A giant chicken!

Or a walking catfish. I don't know if they are built for a life of vicious masticating, but they're definitely built to creep me out.

deSelby's Improved Piranha?

(Some improvement required to get in on land, clearly.)

Was it teenidol?

That's a frightening amount of detail about that movie.

a very large snake

The hippo, now, the hippo is the grumpiest of animals. Known to overturn boats and upend waterskiers just for the hell of it, the hippo's slabs of enamel are the size of hotels -- in fact the Pickamite bird, the only fellow animal the hippo will tolerate due to their symbiotic relationship (the Pickamite bird sings the hippo to sleep, in return for which the hippo agrees not to submerge without fair warning), has been known to make temporary lodging within the hollowed teeth. When annoyed, which is all the time, the hippo can use its oral blocks of stone to grind its enemies into a bitter but nutritious pesto.

a bitter but nutritious pesto

That is SO the new tagline for this website.

Hippo is a good guess. But still wrong.

The animal in question is non-North American. And not an herbivore-- the 14-year-old in question was, apparently, attacked as a potential prey item, although there's no way to confirm that since the boy wasn't actually eaten but died of blood loss. Hippos are notoriously dangerous when their territory is impeded upon, but they rarely eat people (unless you're talking about the quasi-mythical Hungry Hungry Hippos, of course).

And, Sara -- no amount of detail about The Edge could possibly be as frightening as the realization that one has actually viewed most of it, WITH commercial interruptions. There aren't many feature films that contain as many moments of two big-name actors yelling at a trained bear.

It's not a big snake, either.

Wow, "The Bear" sounds an awful lot like "Grizzly," which I believe Scott can confirm was the most meticulous "Jaws" rip-off of the '70s.

Tse-tse fly?

a Komodo dragon

Oops, instead of "The Bear" I mean "The Edge." But that gives me another guess -- Dachshund

By the way, they have giant river catfish (the non-walking kind) at the New Orleans aquarium and sweet jebus those things are off-putting. Talk about creepy. The notice by the tank said that (among other things) they feed on "unwary dogs."

A goddamned Komodo Dragon.

Too late! Okay, some other kind of more obscure monitor lizard, just in case Sara's wrong.

an orc, escaped from the set of Lord of the Rings

Give it up for the woman from the Apple Blossom State. Sara gets in the right answer just ahead of Soren. It was indeed a Komodo dragon, the largest of the monitor lizards, called an ora in the local dialect. More on this subject and indeed lots less trivial about bitey animals in David Quammen's Monster of God.

One fact Quammen leaves out -- as watchers of truly important media may remember, Komodo dragons prefer to nosh on the rich and famous, when available.

I had great hopes for The Bear as it was written (directed?) by David Mamet.

How about the tasmanian devil? Not of my continent I believe.

The worst thing about Komodo Dragons is even if they don't make you bleed to death from the initial attack, you have a good chance of dying from the subsequent infection. Their mouths are a big septic party.

a big septic party

If I ever get tired of "bitter, nutritious pesto" I think I have a backup phrase.

Damn that italics code. If I only skipped italicizing The Bear I could have posted sooner and got my incorrect guess in befoer the buzzer!

Ohmigod, you guys are FREAKS.
A monkey?

And just to, ahem, cover my ass, so to speak, I'll go ahead and claim "primate."

Sure, I'll take a monkey.

**lights up**

Ahh...that's good monkey...

And as long as I'm at it, Sylvia Plath. Loved to bite!

And Truffle-snuffling pig!

hedgehog!

Dog!

frog!

(How

do

you

like

your single-answer-per-post rule

now?)

I'm stunned at my good luck - I was going to come back and guess a very large spider because Komodo Dragon seemed too obvious.

And this isn't just the apple blossom state, it's also the state for seekers of pleasant peninsulas.

Where do I go for objectionable archipelagos?

We like to claim the "Objectionable Archipelago" title right here in the Big Scrapple, Scott.

And Sara, you thought that the Komodo Dragon was obvious but Grizzly Bear was not? Clearly, I have perpetuated an interesting image of quiz logic on this here program.

I mean, a kid gets bit in the tuchus and bleeds to death and the OBVIOUS answer is "Komodo Dragon"?

Obvious meaning that I couldn't think of any other non-North American animal that would be likely to bite a person once rather than chew on the poor kid for a while.

[grudging]

Well, that's fair enough...

[/grudging]

I actually rushed out of a meeting upon the sudden insight that the surprising answer had to be "Wombat!" only to find that the prize had been taken, and by a reptile! (No offense, Sara)

Dammit, Scott! I rushed to the end of this endless scroll of comments to post "Wombat" too. And not only is the prize taken, but you got the most obvious non-American-creature answer first.

Not only have I today violated quiz ettiquette by getting shirty with the illustrious victor, but I must now admit that the delicious possibility of the answer "Wombat" never even crossed the barren wasteland that is my mind. I need more coffee.

y'all people are so fuckin' dumb, but i'll take a guess: crok/gator.