I have the most random mind sometimes. I was out at Lake Martin last weekend and I saw a nutria rat and commented to my wife, "I may not be fast, but I could outrun him."

Knowing how old, fat and slow I am, my lovely bride secretly and telepathically dared the nutria to give it a go. Thankfully he did not listen to her mind waves.

The rest of the time spent on the lake was me pondering which animals I could flee from if they ever came racing for me.

Google to the answer. Not as many as I need to stay alive should I be attacked by most members of Louisiana's wildlife.

Let's have fun with this. Which animals from "around these parts" could the average human outrun should they need to in a dire situation?

First, we must establish how fast humans run. A quick search reveals that the fastest speed a human has ever reached was 27.5 miles per hour. That was achieved during a race in 2009 by Olympic sprinter Usain Bolt.

But, none of us are that fast.

While it's obvious that we all have different speeds if we were to open full throttle, for the purposes of this story, we'll pick a pretty solid speed.

In what I've read, a healthy adult human is probably somewhere in the 10-15 miles per hour range. So we'll just go with 15 miles per hour as the benchmark.

Therefore, at that speed, if one of these wonderful Louisiana creatures comes running up to you out of the swamp and wants to take a taste of you, could they do it? Let's find out.