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Bruce, That is so funny!

The best we have had is a giant black widow spider.

I heard of two vaulters making out an a pit one night during an official recruiting visit. Thank goodness it was a guy and a girl! I guess they were just testing it's density. LOL

we had a rat nest in ours last year, and found a dead mouse under the weather cover some day later when we uncovered the pit for practice...

and then there's all the nasty bugs and worms and junk that get in the box when it rains >.< we do have a cover for it, but its not much help against rain considering there's a HOLE in it (intentionally...its just a sheet of metal basically, and its a finger hole to lift it off...)

one day we disassembled the pits to move them to the other runway to get a good wind. When we took off the top bun a horrid stench came out. On the left-back big mat between the netting and the foam, we found a mouse that had been flattened down to about a quarter of an inch. One guy always lands left and he'd been landing on the poor mouse that had found a good new home for about a month. But when we found the tunnels it had made in side the pit we decieded it served the ******* right.

We had our highschool mat's torn up by rats one summer, fairly nasty when we went to get them out during the year. Just last semester we had a skunk in our pole bag. Our shed that we keep our poles and stuff in still smells. He got what was coming to him..............

when we uncovered the pit for the first time since last year it had a dead squirrel and a frog on it

Everyday when we would uncover our old pit, there was this one mouse that would start to build a tiny little nest in the center of the pit right under the weather cover, and everyday we would get rid of it, just to find it again the next day!

That pit was super old, and when we were taking it apart to get rid of it, we found: fire ants, tree frogs, toads, mice, and a 4' black rat snake, not to mention that underneath the pit there was a massive growth of fungus/algae... delicious.

Lori

here in Gainesville whenever we move our pits we have to watch out for blackwidow spiders, theyre huge! last one we found was the size of a nickel!

When I was in high school ('83) there was a large field next to our school track. The school rented it to a circus that had 5 or so elephants, the largest a male. They had the elepants just on the other side of the stadium fence about 20 yrds. from the pv pit. As I stretched I watched the elephants get a bath and then the handler led all the females off into the tent. I thought it was awesome to have elephants so close to the pv mats. I decided to take a slow jog around the track. Our mats were located in the bend of the second turn. Heading into the first turn (almost completing my lap) I decided to sprint the rest of the way and jump into the pit. Our track was asphalt and I was wearing spikes. As I picked up speed the spikes were really starting to make some noise. At the apex of the turn the noise startled the male elephant. In an instant his ears and trunk went up and making that trumpet sound they make he charged towards me and the mats. Thank goodness he was staked to the ground and the chain held. I don't think that chain link fence would have held him up. Talk about an adrenaline surge.

A couple years ago at SWT, we found an extremely large mean possum under our pits. We tried to catch it, but it literally disappeared into thin air and we never found it. Needless, to say. He never came back.

I love this thread

Mark Hintz (manufacturer of Elite pits) recommends putting dryer sheets under the pit and between the sections. He says they keep the rodents away even better than moth balls.

Peepers PV wrote:Everyday when we would uncover our old pit, there was this one mouse that would start to build a tiny little nest in the center of the pit right under the weather cover, and everyday we would get rid of it, just to find it again the next day!

That pit was super old, and when we were taking it apart to get rid of it, we found: fire ants, tree frogs, toads, mice, and a 4' black rat snake, not to mention that underneath the pit there was a massive growth of fungus/algae... delicious.

Lori

i went to check the pits at my school to see the condition and found a small mouse in a hole underneath the corner of the pit. it was so small that i didn't want to shoo it away. and so i let it make a home in the pv pit (hopefully, it won't like eat all the way through the pit ... then i might have to do something about that ...)

We found a snake in the box two different times. Rabbits live under the mat. Spiders are on the standard bases. Oh yea, and one time we found Terry Porter on the pit.