What's going on at Yellowstone?
June 17, 2016 10:31 AM   Subscribe

No, I'm not talking about the "super volcano" that'll destroy the Earth (which is, you know, not likely). I'm talking about all the crazy stuff that's happened there this season, the result of growing numbers of both tourists and wildlife.

Tourists have been caught this year on camera sidling up to bison, even petting them, which culminated in an incident where a tourist "rescued" a bison calf -- and condemned it to its death. (Bonus pic of the calf in the tourist's SUV.) Can Helvetica man save tourists?

And then there are the tourists that have wandered off the boardwalks by hot springs. A 13-year-old boy was burned when his father -- by mistake, one presumes -- dropped him into a hot spring. "Tourist Bros" were charged for wandering off the boardwalk after filming themselves stomping on delicate hotspring grounds. Most recently a Chinese tourist was fined $1,000 dollars for leaving the boardwalk by Mammoth Hot Springs, damaging the terratine crust, and collecting hot springs water. This incident occurred not long after a 23-year-old Portland man was killed falling into a hot pool in the Norris Geyser Basin after leaving the boardwalk. (The man's body has yet to be recovered.)

And, okay, this isn't the tourist's fault, but a Yellowstone bear was caught on film opening up a family's car door...
posted by touchstone033 (60 comments total) 16 users marked this as a favorite
 
I don't know if this year is any more crazy than other years, the crazy shit might be more publicized.

We went there a few years ago and witnessed stupid shit every day by ignorant tourists.

If you want a historical look at people doing dumb stuff in Yellowstone I recommend 'Death in Yellowstone' . *not for the squeamish*
posted by Confess, Fletch at 10:37 AM on June 17, 2016 [5 favorites]


I grew up near the park. These kinds of incidents are not new or uncommon. They occur randomly and like any random series there are clusters.
posted by humanfont at 10:38 AM on June 17, 2016 [8 favorites]


I don't think I'm alone in that my speculation about the Yellowstone supercaldera bathing the earth in its purifying ash is based less on fact than on hope, with the year we've been having.
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:42 AM on June 17, 2016 [29 favorites]


I have never understood why people are not more afraid of nature. Nature scares me! I do not want to go on "boardwalks" alongside 200 degree water, never mind step off such a path, because if something went wrong you would fall in and die horribly!

Dangerous things are great things to avoid! There's enough unavoidable danger in everyday life without seeking out special, exotic danger.

I mean, there's fucking grizzly bears trying to crack open people's cars and eat them like snails or something - why would you not avoid this region? I blame the romantic poets, personally, the dumbasses.
posted by Frowner at 10:44 AM on June 17, 2016 [29 favorites]


See? This is why we can't have nice things.
posted by scottatdrake at 10:45 AM on June 17, 2016 [2 favorites]


There's also the "death in Yosemite" stories which mostly involve people being swept over waterfalls or drowned in shallow but fast-moving water.

National Parks are dangerous places people. They're not goddamned Disney World.
posted by GuyZero at 10:49 AM on June 17, 2016 [12 favorites]



I grew up near the park. These kinds of incidents are not new or uncommon. They occur randomly and like any random series there are clusters.


It might be getting more common as Yellowstone has been very successful in managing the recovery of endangered species to the point where culling is needed. Add that to increasing tourism and I don't find it surprising that this will increase if the park hasn't figured out how to better educate its visitors and figure out how to improve their preventative measures.

Heck, out here you don't have to be a tourist; you just have to be one of the residents of a new housing community that has encroached on former wilderness to meet bears and mountain cats.

I like animals but I sure do respect them. I also wouldn't touch a seemingly wounded animal in a park unless it was clearly a domesticated one (a dog or cat -- though a big dog may give me pause until I'm sure it's an actual dog versus a coyote or wolf). I wouldn't even rescue a crow, pigeon or squirrel if it meant having to bring them in for treatment (taking off a yogurt cup from their head is okay although seriously why are there so many of these -- yogurt companies are evil!). At a park? Call the ranger.
posted by linux at 10:50 AM on June 17, 2016 [1 favorite]


I have read Death in Yellowstone (highly recommended as well).

It's history repeating itself.
posted by JoeZydeco at 10:52 AM on June 17, 2016


National Parks are dangerous places people. They're not goddamned Disney World.
In Disney World's defense they're trying to be more like national parks, in terms of danger.
posted by ilama at 10:53 AM on June 17, 2016 [25 favorites]


Nthing "they're dangerous places." Growing up in Oregon we were taught safety/orientation in forests, at the ocean, and at Crater Lake, because every year there were deaths due to people getting lost, being pulled out by undertows, and sliding down the (very steep) sides of the caldera and not being able to climb back out of the lake. This was repeated when I worked at Crater Lake, where they warned us that every single year at least one tourist ignored the oft-repeated warnings never to go off-trail on the caldera and drowned.

I myself have crossed bears without meaning to, both at Crater Lake and in Glacier.
posted by fraula at 11:08 AM on June 17, 2016 [1 favorite]


There's no body to be recovered. Hope this saves you some time.
posted by dilaudid at 11:15 AM on June 17, 2016 [4 favorites]


...more generally, there's that small percentage of people who, given any rule, must break it, just to be the center of attention.

It's hardly a boiling lake, but we took a distillery tour in St. Augustine last week and the guide was adamant about the yellow lines. "Stay behind the yellow lines for your safety."

Of course Mr. Cool, who'd earlier found the light switch in the tour's waiting-room/"history of distilling" display and was flipping it on and off like a child, practically ran to the first yellow line he saw, and jumped across it. "Babe! Look! See? Ha! Oooh scary, I'm across the yellow line. What are they gonna do?!"

It reflects poorly on me that I wouldn't have minded a bubbling caldera swallowing him whole, just then.
posted by easement1 at 11:19 AM on June 17, 2016 [27 favorites]


In Disney World's defense they're trying to be more like national parks, in terms of danger.

Too soon. Geez.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 11:21 AM on June 17, 2016 [11 favorites]


Dangerous things are great things to avoid! There's enough unavoidable danger in everyday life without seeking out special, exotic danger.

If you drove in a car to work this morning, you were likely closer to getting killed than anyone in Yellowstone.
posted by sideshow at 11:21 AM on June 17, 2016 [5 favorites]


There's no body to be recovered. Hope this saves you some time.

Acidic 200 degree water! Jesus, it's like a Bond villain invented this place.

While I am seldom nostalgic for earlier eras, I do have a sort of creeping respect for the times before about 1800 when people either lived in nature with care and a certain daily prudence (I bet you wouldn't catch a lot of Native people stepping near the edge of a pool of boiling acid, for instance) or just cowered in their villages and towns happily avoiding horrible predators, poisonous plants and long drops.
posted by Frowner at 11:22 AM on June 17, 2016 [1 favorite]


If you drove in a car to work this morning, you were likely closer to getting killed than anyone in Yellowstone.

Yes, you see, that's the unavoidable danger. Although actually I took the bus.

Every day I already risk getting hit by a car or concussing myself in the shower. Why add to that by frolicking around the acid pools? You go ahead, of course.
posted by Frowner at 11:23 AM on June 17, 2016 [4 favorites]


THANKS OBAMA SUPREME-LEADER TRUMP!
posted by blue_beetle at 11:24 AM on June 17, 2016


DO NOT TAUNT HAPPY FUN CALDERA.

...an incident where a tourist "rescued" a bison calf

There were a number of people who condemned Carol Off's interview with the bison-rescuing dude as being too harsh, but I personally disagree. You can listen to it here.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 11:25 AM on June 17, 2016 [4 favorites]


Acidic 200 degree water! Jesus, it's like a Bond villain invented this place.

A Bond villain would lower you in so slowly you'd have time to make youself a final meal on the way in.

just cowered in their villages and towns happily avoiding horrible predators, poisonous plants and long drops.

Only to die of pneumonia at age 12.

I suspect that's why people used to be so gung-ho on going to war because the alternatives were to die young in a glorious war or die young of food poisoning or influenza.
posted by GuyZero at 11:25 AM on June 17, 2016 [1 favorite]


Yellowstone stinks, I mean literally stinks. I can't imagine wanting to wade into water that fucking reeks.
posted by AFABulous at 11:27 AM on June 17, 2016


A lot of this crazy behavior seen in parks, zoos, hotels in Florida, etc. seems to be instigated by the presence of signs asking people not to do the very thing they are doing. I don't know if it's a psychological quirk or what, but certain people seem to see a sign and have a conviction that somehow a right is being violated by the common sense words posted nearby. And gosh darnit, The Man can't tell me that I shouldn't wade in that lagoon or feed a bear or step off that boardwalk. Never mind that these signs exist for a reason. When I volunteered at a local wildlife area we had a sign begging people not to fuck with the snapping turtles. And yet every few days someone would haul into the office with a dripping bloody wound looking for a clean towel.
posted by xyzzy at 11:27 AM on June 17, 2016 [17 favorites]


As noted above, tourists doing crazy things at Yellowstone is not new.

My junior high science teacher served as a Ranger during the summers. He recounted the story of the time he came across a tourist trying to push A bear into the drivers seat of his car so he could get a picture of the bear driving and sitting next to his wife.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 11:34 AM on June 17, 2016 [19 favorites]


I should note that the bear story comes from the early 70s when it wasn't uncommon for the bears to beg at the side of the road for food. They weren't tame by any means but they were somewhat conditioned to seeing humans around.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 11:42 AM on June 17, 2016


Huh. I can't believe I'm even saying this but after reading about the whole bison thing, I have a lot more sympathy for the bison rescuer. He basically took his other experiences with found, hurt animals and brought them to the fore on this incident. Ever see a hurt animal by the side of the road and stop to see if you could help? Or even taken a hurt animal to a rescue organization? He seemed to think that it was going to die out there and thought he was bringing it somewhere to be rescued or rehabilitated. The rules at Yellowstone are different than other areas. And when people apply their sensibilities, honed elsewhere, to that environment, stuff happens...bad stuff...stupid stuff.

I've been to Yellowstone a number of times but I was definitely brought up right – my parents loved to share gruesome tales to us kids about what would happen if we strayed off the trails or didn't take wildlife seriously – skin boiled off bones, bear maulings, hoof strikes to the face, plummets to your death. When I went there as an adult we were in a buffalo traffic jam and I was freaking out and my husband was laughing at me. I was saying, "Go very slow and do not make eye contact with these animals." He thought that was ridiculous until one came right up beside our tiny Honda hatchback and pretty much dwarfed it. Later we saw some foreign tourists posing next to buffalo and he was freaking out, "What the hell are they doing? Let's get out of here before we have to watch someone get gored!" It's like: they aren't in cages so they must be safe! Wrong.

And the boardwalks there are amazing. Very open. Good for people who believe in the danger and will be total hawks on their kids, bad for other types of people who just aren't convinced. I feel so bad for the people who were with the guy who fell into the acid pool. What a goddamn thing.
posted by amanda at 11:44 AM on June 17, 2016 [8 favorites]


This post doesn't include the three-part Casper Gazette exposé of the the visitor abduction conspiracy among the park ranger vampires.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 11:52 AM on June 17, 2016 [2 favorites]


Damn right these tourists think they are at Disney World....

In Denali, there's this fantastic glacial river called the Nenana, and several outfitters run rafting expeditions down it.

Tourists frequently ask about the mechanics of the amusement park-style hydraulic tracks they are certain must be under the water.
posted by mochapickle at 11:57 AM on June 17, 2016 [5 favorites]


my parents loved to share gruesome tales to us kids about what would happen if we strayed off the trails or didn't take wildlife seriously

On a family trip to Yosemite a few years back we did the Nevada Falls hike, which is a pretty common thing - there's practically traffic jams on the trail.

The next day we saw the ranger presentation about safety in Yosemite which was basically "Faces of Death" except not fake. One of the terrible incidents was a girl slipping off of the Mist Trail (or whatever part it is that's pretty much always slippery wet rock) and fell into the river below, swept away and drowned.

My wife immediately turned to me and asked why in hell we just did that.
posted by GuyZero at 11:57 AM on June 17, 2016 [2 favorites]


I've wondered if there are budgetary reasons or something for there to be fewer rangers in the parks because it seems like no matter where you go these days, there's someone doing something stupid. I've been to about 30 National Parks in the past 5 years or so and seen some truly absurd amateur hour shit go down, and not just in the Yellowstone/Yosemite/Shenandoah style super popular parks, but even the lower profile places. Last time I was in Zion I was on the upper Emerald Pool Falls trail and was telling someone it was a bad idea for their boyfriend/husband/whatever to go off trail as he scrambled up a steep slope and she looked at me with absolute contempt and laughed only for him to come falling down and narrowly avoid sliding off the edge a few minutes later. In Joshua Tree, while a good 5 miles offtrail in an oasis arroyo in triple digit heat, we came across a group of teenagers that had basically no water but at least 3 30 racks of PBR. At Pinnacles, I've seen people attempting to climb small but substantial rock formations with standard nylon work ropes. It just never ends. The rangers really do have a thankless job.
posted by feloniousmonk at 12:02 PM on June 17, 2016 [6 favorites]


There were some stories of people being "attacked" by wild animals at Yellowstone in the past few years as well... I remember someone from another country got gored. Each time it was really more a matter of these people facing the consequences of being stupid around massive wild animals. Like trying to get a selfie or picture with the bison.

A local open space preserve around me had a mountain lion "attack" a kid a few years ago..... only the story I heard was that the "attack" happened when the parents were trying to get a pic of their kid with the WILD CAT. The kid got bit and was fine. Authorities had to hunt down and kill what I presume was a random mountain lion and immediately release "DNA evidence" that it was the same cat. *eyeroll* I hike there all the time and see little kids running around with their parents way back on the trail. I tell them all the time to keep the kids in arms reach and often get the "don't tell me how to parent my kid" look. OK, but if you end up on the news, I'm calling in to tell them I saw you doing exactly what you shouldn't have been doing. :/

tl;dr: Darwin needs to give out more awards.
posted by CoffeeHikeNapWine at 12:33 PM on June 17, 2016 [2 favorites]


Acidic 200 degree water! Jesus, it's like a Bond villain invented this place.

A Bond villain would lower you in so slowly you'd have time to make youself a final meal on the way in.


Funny you should say that. Last time I was there, a ranger was telling me about an elk that fell into one of the boiling pools, and said "it smelled delicious" and that when they pulled out what they could, the meat slid right off the bone. Good eatin'!

I'm never going back to Yellowstone or the Great Smoky Mountains after seeing how the wildlife at those parks was acclimated to humans. There's nothing more unsettling than seeing a bear not give a fuck about humans and go after their cars or packs when 99% of the bears you've seen in other wilderness areas and even other national parks turn tail and run if you're within 200 yards of them.

From what I can tell, brown bears give zero fucks about humans unless they perceive you as a threat or as prey. Bears learn very quickly that cars and packs contain delicious goodies.
posted by me & my monkey at 12:34 PM on June 17, 2016 [1 favorite]


This could just be my inner codger emerging but I think a lot of recent behavior has to do with the rise of social media and the age of the selfie.. Not that people haven't been doing stupid things for ages to get pictures of themselves with wildlife or in precarious spots, but that at least used to be mostly limited to those who bothered to carry cameras. Now (nearly) everybody's got a camera and a lot of them are looking for a way to get attention from their audience.
posted by Nerd of the North at 12:43 PM on June 17, 2016 [14 favorites]


Maybe people look at the wildlife as low-paid service workers and treat them as if the customer is always right
posted by thelonius at 12:45 PM on June 17, 2016 [10 favorites]


Agree with Nerd of the North -- a lot of this stuff has *always* been happening, but now EVERYBODY has a cellphone/camera/etc, so every incident is sure to be recorded and shared.

As the online manager of one of the media outlets here in Montana, let me tell you: most Montanans have absolutely zero fucks to give when it comes to people getting gored, injured, or even killed in Yellowstone. I've seen many, many truly heartless comments (some serious, some in "jest") on the Facebook pages I manage.

And yeah - the last few weeks have been utterly ridiculous.

Also - my sincere condolences to the YNP PR staff - one of their members died very suddenly about three weeks ago (shortly after giving birth, truly sad), and the YNP PR folks are dealing with major personal heartbreak AND the seemingly non-stop rule-breaking tourists.
posted by davidmsc at 12:58 PM on June 17, 2016 [4 favorites]


Acidic 200 degree water! Jesus, it's like a Bond villain invented this place.

It's Planet of the Damned. It was earth all along!
posted by maxsparber at 1:14 PM on June 17, 2016


I've wondered if there are budgetary reasons or something for there to be fewer rangers in the parks because it seems like no matter where you go these days, there's someone doing something stupid.

YNP, even the front country, is Big. I don't purport to know the facts about funding for NPS staffing but to expect there to be anywhere near a large enough presence of rangers for them to have a fair chance to prevent, again even front-country, tourists from doing stupid things is just mind-bogglingly unrealistic.

I've worked there in the park twice, not as a ranger, but that's still plenty to know that tourists, insofar as they are a subset of the general populace, are going to do woefully ignorant and stupid things.

What's going on... I can't guess... but seeing the sample of humanity that I saw working out there and hearing the mindbogglingly dumb questions from grown-ass adults was truly a wake up call to the fact that it's amazing that humanity has gotten as far as we have...
posted by RolandOfEld at 1:20 PM on June 17, 2016 [4 favorites]


Agree with Nerd of the North -- a lot of this stuff has *always* been happening, but now EVERYBODY has a cellphone/camera/etc, so every incident is sure to be recorded and shared.

Thirded.
posted by RolandOfEld at 1:22 PM on June 17, 2016


Yeah, I went to Yellowstone and barely saw any wildlife but each time I did people were doing incredibly dumb things around it. I saw a woman walk up to a female elk with children elk with her toddler. I saw people get out of their cars around bison. I saw people screech to a halt because a bear was on the roadside.

Not to mention people traipsing along cliff edges like they were in Central Park in the middle of the day.

Like, I have absolutely no experience around wildlife and you could not drag me camping if you promised to pay off all my student loans, but that made me more cautious, not less. And I trusted the rangers when they told us "hey, you could die, so if you don't want to die, don't do these things."
posted by Automocar at 1:33 PM on June 17, 2016


I visited Yellowstone in 1964? Ish. There were bears lined up on the entrance road being fed marshmallows by tourists. My father was horrified. I remember him not letting us pet the Bears. I guess people from cities have always treated wildlife like zoo animals.
posted by djinn dandy at 1:36 PM on June 17, 2016


Funny you should say that. Last time I was there, a ranger was telling me about an elk that fell into one of the boiling pools, and said "it smelled delicious" and that when they pulled out what they could, the meat slid right off the bone. Good eatin'!

Nightmarish neolithic BBQ
posted by GuyZero at 1:38 PM on June 17, 2016 [1 favorite]


> As the online manager of one of the media outlets here in Montana, let me tell you: most Montanans have absolutely zero fucks to give when it comes to people getting gored, injured, or even killed in Yellowstone.

One of the things I remember from spending a couple summers in Bozeman many years ago was a local radio station's reporting of incidents in the park. They read them out like a sporting event: "Yesterday, an encounter between a Wisconsin tourist and a bison brought the score to Yellowstone - 3, tourists - 0."
posted by penguinicity at 1:39 PM on June 17, 2016 [17 favorites]


I looked into the background of the horrific short story "Hot potting" from Palahniuk's "Haunted" a while back, and it looks like this incident in Yellowstone in 1981 was used (lightly changed and fictionalized) as background for it. Warning, definitely, definitely not for the squeamish.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 2:14 PM on June 17, 2016 [1 favorite]


While putting the bison calf in the car was foolish -- if you see an issue in a National Park with an animal, call a ranger -- I do think the claims that it resulted in the death are off-base. If you can put a bison calf in your car without having a bison charge or gore you, it's an abandoned bison calf. They aren't like deer that will leave a fawn on its own, the calf moves with its mother. It was going to die anyway.

So they probably were correct it was cold and hungry; it's just that in a national park, unless it's an critically endangered animal like a condor, that just means some other animal is shortly going to be less hungry.
posted by tavella at 2:19 PM on June 17, 2016 [3 favorites]


I visited Yellowstone in 1964? Ish. There were bears lined up on the entrance road being fed marshmallows by tourists. My father was horrified.

I too am horrified. Those bears probably ended up doing poorly in life because they didn't wait for the experimenter to return before eating the marshmallows.
posted by srboisvert at 2:36 PM on June 17, 2016 [40 favorites]


davidmsc's story about the parboiled elk reminds me of the Ringo Starr movie "Caveman", and the 'discovery' of hard-boiled eggs....

And I've got to agree with the folks who say there are idiots who take 'Don't Do This' signs as some sort of challenge. Remember a couple years ago when that tourist at Arlington National Cemetery posted a Facebook picture that went viral: she was standing next to a sign saying "Silence and Respect" at the Tomb of the Unknowns, and thought it was funny to take a photo of her yelling and making the middle-finger gesture. People can sure be idiots.
posted by easily confused at 3:57 PM on June 17, 2016


Meanwhile, in Canada...
At about 4:30 a.m., Barnaby heard a loud noise. She quickly recognized it as a mother bear. Listening closely, trying to drown out the buzz of mosquitoes, sure enough she heard a cub respond from far away in the distance. The two bears had been separated.

"I realized that there was a chance that the mother bear would tackle the wolf if she felt that the wolf was a threat," Barnaby explains.

"So I made the choice of walking towards the cub."
posted by vibratory manner of working at 4:58 PM on June 17, 2016 [3 favorites]


The best 'don't do this' sign I ever saw was in Virginia. There was a park with a hill that had a waterfall. The sign entering the park had the demographics of all the people who had died because they walked off the path to try and take a scenic photo with the waterfall in the background. The waterfall mist meant the rocks were covered in a treacherously slippery film.

The top fatal demographic was college kids. So the smartest were the dumbest.
posted by srboisvert at 4:59 PM on June 17, 2016 [3 favorites]


Protip: Fend off hungry packs of me by leaving your pic-a-nic basket in easy open view. Roving gangs of me will espie the basket as easy pickings, and slink back off into the night to enjoy the spoils of a hunt well done.
posted by the uncomplicated soups of my childhood at 5:09 PM on June 17, 2016


Dangerous things are great things to avoid! There's enough unavoidable danger in everyday life without seeking out special, exotic danger.
posted by Frowner at 10:44 AM on June 17 [21 favorites +] [!]


uhhh just out of curiosity is your house built in a hole in the ground? Does it have a very round door? Is the inside of this house a particularly cozy English cottage? do you often get in disputes with your unfashionably adventurous cousins about inheritances?

what are your thoughts about mushrooms?
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 5:36 PM on June 17, 2016 [11 favorites]


I enjoy mushrooms in a quiet sort of way, and I definitely hate it when people chip my glasses or crack the nice dinnerware. I like small repeating florals and organic materials. When people come to my door and attempt first to mooch dinner off me and then make me go on trips without even a valise, unlike certain people who I've always thought were pretty ridiculous, I do not go.

Frankly, I've always been suspicious about this "let's set off cross country relying on mooching food and gear off randos instead of packing properly, go tear up some other species's homeland on the theory that they are 'evil' and then put some all powerful 'High King' on the throne" business. Sounds imperialist if you ask me, for one thing, and also uncomfortable. If a bunch of Aryan dudes on horses have some sovereignty issues, let them settle it amongst themselves without dragging the rest of us into things, that's what I say.
posted by Frowner at 5:43 PM on June 17, 2016 [28 favorites]


I loved Yellowstone. As soon as we got out of the car there were a whole bunch of grey, bleached dead trees on the other side of the parking lot from the hot pools. Hmm, trees killed by acid gases - I wonder how often that happens around here? Often, as it turns out. The worst thing we saw was someone with a little car and a bigger trailer drive into the river, causing a traffic jam on account of the gawking.

On the other hand, we got run off the road coming home by a guy towing a 40' section of irrigation arm.
posted by sneebler at 7:56 PM on June 17, 2016


Spent three days there, loved it. Old Faithful tops my list of touristy things I thought were super kitschy going in but turned out to be just wonderful (Rome as a whole was kind of the reverse for me). On the dumb tourist side, saw the aftermath of two fatal car wrecks - "honey, look at that-" bam, you're done. At nearby Grand Teton one of the roads was closed because a grizzy family was in the area and the tourists had been taking selfies with the cubs but through some act of baby jesus didn't get eaten on sight. Also bison are terrifying, majestic beasts.
posted by MillMan at 8:11 PM on June 17, 2016


See, I think a lot of this has to be because people spend too much damn time in cities. When you DON'T live in a city, this stuff is common sense. I've had a mountain lion in my yard. I have feared for my life from a bull out of its fence. I've had my car charged, scratched, and slobbered on by a bison. (Ok, that last one was in a drive-through wildlife refuge. )

But basically the LAST thing I ever want to do is GET CLOSER when I see a wild animal. I'm the queen of 'Nope, I can see it fine from the window, thanks."
posted by threeturtles at 8:14 PM on June 17, 2016


I just drove by the yesterday, wanted to go through, but the whole area is pretty booked this year. So, looks like a good year to have skipped it. Two years ago when I went through, there were stupid tourists doing things near bison. Fuck that. Yellowstone is the best though.
posted by Windopaene at 9:15 PM on June 17, 2016


> While putting the bison calf in the car was foolish -- if you see an issue in a National Park with an animal, call a ranger -- I do think the claims that it resulted in the death are off-base. If you can put a bison calf in your car without having a bison charge or gore you, it's an abandoned bison calf. They aren't like deer that will leave a fawn on its own, the calf moves with its mother. It was going to die anyway.

Which is fine and part of the natural world, because if it died abandoned out in nature it would be eaten by wolves, coyotes, foxes and other mammals that NEED THE CALORIES.
posted by thewalrus at 11:18 PM on June 17, 2016 [2 favorites]


You don't need wilderness to see people do dumb tourist things.

On one biology class we took a field trip to the tide pools, where the teacher pointed out the sea anemones, and showed how the little stinger cells on their tentacles couldn't penetrate the skin.

So naturally, one genius decided to taste them. They got him to the hospital in time.


Another field trip to the local mountain, a kid came running up excitedly, wanting the teacher to identify the insect he had found. The teacher took one look, and quietly told him to carefully put it down. The scorpion, which had its stinger up and ready, wavered off.


And then in a California suburb one day, my brother proudly came home with the baby king snake he had found, in a coffee can. My dad wondered why it kept hitting the lid, and looked closely- yep, the "king snake" had a small single rattle on the end of the tail.

People- they'll be dumb anywhere.
posted by happyroach at 11:57 PM on June 17, 2016 [1 favorite]


thewalrus: Which is fine and part of the natural world, because if it died abandoned out in nature it would be eaten by wolves, coyotes, foxes and other mammals that NEED THE CALORIES.

And what about my post suggested I was disagreeing with that? I was simply pointing out that the popular framing of "they killed the baby bison by putting it in their car" is unlikely to be true. If they had called the rangers instead, they would have come out, realized that bison was abandoned or orphaned and interfering with traffic, and put it down. Just as the rangers did in this instance, with a brief lacuna.

As a previous poster said, their diagnosis of the situation was likely correct. The bison was indeed likely cold and hungry. It wasn't that they were crazy stupid, as most stories presented them. It's just that they failed to adapt their observation to the framing of a national park. Outside of one, you might very well take an orphaned animal to a wildlife rescue; inside one, you let life and death happen.
posted by tavella at 11:59 AM on June 18, 2016 [1 favorite]


Parks, be it on the state or national or whatever level, don't simply occur. They are put in places known for something notable, usually grandeur of the scenic variety. By definition that usually means places with dramatic elevation changes--gorges, cliffs, waterfalls--or places with hazardous but extreme natural beauty--rocky coastlines, deserts, hot springs, etc. These are also, coincidentally, places of great danger.

Most humans, especially young ones, fail to grasp the perils inherent in such places, which inspire extreme feelings that can include strong curiosity. Folks don't like rules, even the ones put in place to protect them, and the lure of the perfect selfie or the most dramatic climb can be strong.

Letchworth State Park in western NY has impressive cliffs waterfalls, and every year someone goes over one, usually in an area marked "restricted." Just recently five family members (two of them adults) were swept over a waterfall when they elected to explore beyond barricades. Two children, 6 and 9, did not survive.

So long as the public has access to scenic wonders there will be casualties, and this is terribly sad as the result is increased restrictions even for those who abide by the rules.
posted by kinnakeet at 12:25 PM on June 18, 2016 [1 favorite]


I don't know if it's a psychological quirk or what, but certain people seem to see a sign and have a conviction that somehow a right is being violated by the common sense words posted nearby.

See also: the popularity of lawn darts among a certain type of person after they were banned. Consider the intersection of the set of people who set out into dangerous locations and situations without proper (if any) preparation or precautions with those who expect to be promptly and unquestioningly rescued subsequently, not to mention pristine cell-phone reception to call for such help, no matter where they are. On something of a tangent, I'm very much in favor of seeding national parks with wolves and bears that are genetically engineered to live off of ATV riders.
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:58 PM on June 18, 2016 [2 favorites]


Halloween Jack: the only problem with your genetically-engineered wolves & bears plan is, I'm not sure that would be a sufficently healthy diet for the poor beasties.... perhaps you could force-feed the ATV riders extra vitamins before releasing them for kibble?
posted by easily confused at 4:25 AM on June 19, 2016 [1 favorite]


People have been passing around the "the calf was abandoned and doomed even before they intervened" story but I'd really like to see a citation on that. It just doesn't match my understanding of wild animal groups, which can separate and re-merge with some alarming frequency and time gap. I feel like you can never truly know if a calf was abandoned until you find it actually dead—and even then you can't know that it was just never reunited in time.

I mean, I do sympathize with the people who "rescued" the calf after learning that was what you're supposed to do in national parks back in their old country. But the-calf-was-doomed story just really reads as second opinion bias to me, not biology.
posted by traveler_ at 10:32 AM on June 19, 2016


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