6 Techniques For Attacking Animals With Children

6 Equipping The Children

Children are incredibly weak and stand little chance when put in a combat situation with a vicious animal. As you are for unexplained reasons responsible for several children but are also not a monster, you're going to have to be aware of this when deploying them. Leave no child behind.

First, obviously, make sure everyone is wearing something with long sleeves. Helmets are also good if you've got them, but they can get expensive if you're equipping a large army of children. Don't go out of your way here; if you have any lying around, go ahead and distribute them as best you see fit. Otherwise, don't sweat it.

In terms of weaponry, children already have sharp little fingers and teeth, which will suffice for our needs. Equipping them with weapons will increase their DPS but also greatly increases the risk of self-injury. Even the simplest of edged weapons is difficult for a child to wield properly, and the same can be said for non-edged weapons, blunt weapons, and perfectly spherical weapons.

5 Training The Children

Your great advantage when attacking animals with an army of children is that children are almost human, and so are potentially capable of large-scale coordination. To do this properly would require training, which is, frankly, a chore. Instead we're going to use yelling, the prince of all parenting/combat leadership skills.

Here you'll need to assess the size of your army. Yelling works fine for coordinating small groups of children, but if your army grows past a certain point, you'll need trusted subordinates to carry out your will when you're not present.

Children respect strength and height and shiny things, so for your lieutenants you should pick large children and then equip them with a token of your favor. A conch shell is the classic choice, but anything bright and shiny will do, including a flashlight, wristwatch, or wadded ball of aluminum foil.

4 Shushing The Children

One problem you'll have with attacking animals with children is that the animals won't want anything to do with you. All animals naturally avoid large groups of children, sensing the deceit that lies within them.

This means you're going to have to sneak up on the animals. Unfortunately, this isn't something children are great at doing. Although individually any child is proficient at sneaking, en masse, their clumsiness and stinkiness will give away your plot long before the animals get within biting and pinching range.

To counter this, you're going to have to use some form of an ambush where you can conceal and quiet the children somehow. Here, most experts are unified in their recommendation: screen time. Several muted iPads will pacify your army until the time is right to pacify the enemy.

3 Baiting The Animals

With your ambush laid, you'll need to lure animals to you. Although a group of children smells of crackers and danger, a sole child smells delicious. By placing your main force of children downwind of the ambush site and tying a single, delicious-smelling child to a stake in the middle of it, you'll lure animals to the doom which you've correctly and prudently decided they deserve.

What makes a child smell delicious? Fear, obviously, which will come about naturally when you tie one to a stake in a secluded area. Make sure this one has short sleeves so that fear can seep out. Then, to get the child to make the small squealing noises that are notorious for attracting animals, ask the child to be quiet, a command they are incapable of following.

One final note: You don't want anything to actually happen to this child, vis-a-vis devouring, because the law say that's illegal. But everything up until then -- yelling, helmet-denying, tying to a stake -- is just fine.

2 Attacking The Animals

Individually, a child is no match for any animal worth attacking. But when they attack en masse, a group of children is capable of bringing down almost anything. It's terrifying, really, and why they keep those big fences up at zoos.

At some pre-arranged signal -- I like, "Children, transform and roll out!" -- order your children to attack the beast in question. At that point, all you have left to do is observe, because you're going to have so little control over what happens next it's not even funny.

1 Throwing Children At The Animals

If your attack fails, then you've done something wrong and should be ashamed of yourself. As there is now a significant chance of a child being devoured, you'll have to quickly subdue the animal yourself, using every tool available to you. As the only tools available are, in fact, children, you will do this mainly by using them as projectiles.

If at all possible, try to use twins, or similar-looking siblings as those projectiles, as it may be possible to use basic sleight of hand to evade the authorities that are no doubt rushing to the scene at this moment.

Animal-Specific Tips

Below I'm going to cover the three main types of animals you will find yourself attacking with children, Jaguars, condors, and whales. Any other animal can be considered a composite of these three basic types, using the proportioning techniques that you certainly learned in grade school.

Animal-Specific Tips: Jaguars

Jaguars are considered Animals of the Land, and they can be subdued using most of the above techniques in their unaltered state. Your trapping and baiting techniques also don't have to be particularly specialized, as jaguars have a wide-ranging diet. Still, before engaging the jaguar, ask if any of the children have guinea pigs or hamsters at home. They will likely carry that stink with them, making them well suited for bait.

Animal-Specific Tips: Condors

Scientists classify condors as Animals of the Sky-Land, which makes them significantly trickier prey to engage, as at the time of writing (2015), children cannot fly. Although a child makes tempting prey for a condor, you may go through several bait-childs before you realize you're unable to inflict any damage on these beasts. Your best bet will be to resort to child-throwing a little earlier than normal, and also asking your bait-child to try to grapple with the condor instead of giving up so easily, come on, Braydon.

Animal-Specific Tips: Whales

Whales are known as Animals of the No-Land and are the hardest type to engage with a force of children. Luring the whales onto land, or even the sky, will improve your odds of success, but this will prove difficult, as children just aren't attractive food to most whales. That said, sick and confused whales have been known to beach themselves, a fact that you can use to your advantage. Submerging children underwater will cause them to emit high-pitched noises that will travel great distances under the ocean, and if whales are anything like humans (I've read that somewhere), they will find these noises irritating and disagreeable and beach themselves as a result. After that, your job -- ordering an army of children to mercilessly butcher a beached whale -- is simple and certain to get you on the news.

Chris Bucholz is a Cracked columnist and expert. His first novel, Severance, is incredible and available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Apex Books. Join him on Facebook or Twitter.

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