For buffalo, that is. At the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge near Lawton they have a couple of small herds of buffalo, always interesting to see. And in the spring there are calves, and sooner or later the herds will wind up near a road and lots of people stop to look and take photos(no problem). However, someone will sooner or later decide they want either a: closeups or b: to pet the damn calves(BIG problem!) One thing you do NOT want to do is rouse the ire of either mama or the herd bull. If you've never been around an American Bison, those suckers are big. And powerful. Roughly every year, some idiot gets gored/stomped/combination because they annoy one of them.
About twenty years ago a friend of mine was down there taking pictures when two idiots in an MG decided to have some 'fun'. They drove off the road, cut a calf off from mama, and started doing circles around it. Baby's yelling for Mom, Mom yells for the boss, and the herd bull looked around and decided "I should do something about this". He came running over, and the two idiots were so busy they never saw him. As they came around, he ran up alongside, lowered his head and hooked and heaved.
According to my friend, the MG actually flipped over and landed on its' wheels. Neither idiot flew out, and the engine stalled. As the thing was no longer making noise or moving- and the idiots happily were smart enough or too stunned to make noise- the bull butted the car a couple of times, baby joined mama and they returned to the herd, the Boss decided it was dead and ambled off. The idiots were realizing they were alive and unhurt about the time a park ranger walked up and proceeded to start writing them up. Can you say 'big fines'? They sure could by the time it was done.
I keep saying 'idiots' for the simple reason you'd have to be truly stupid to see one of these things up close and decide that annoying it would be a good idea. But people so often tend to think of animals that way. In a way I could understand if it was confined to herbivores(no fangs or claws at least), but it's not. Look at the absolutely idiotic things people do with bears and big cats and alligators. Disney Culture strikes over and over; people have heard about the 'friendly animals only made unfriendly by man' so much that they actually believe if they're nice, the animals will be nice back. So they think a cougar roaming through the neighborhood is wonderful, or feeding alligators in the river or lake is friendly, and the bears can be petted. Or in this case, they can try to pet a calf or annoy something capable of stomping them into mulch because "I'm not going to hurt them and they'll know!". Or some other idiot idea. So someone else gets stomped/gored/clawed/bitten to death or crippling, and occasionally gets turned into dinner, and we all get treated to a lecture from some bunny-huggers about how the animal was just 'misunderstood' and we shouldn't be nasty to the poor thing. Bleah. I think it was Heinlein that wrote about stupidity being the only crime in the universe with an automatic death sentance, with no appeal. Speaking of which...
Peter Capstick wrote about a case he knew of. A guy had gone to Africa to, in particular, get film of lions. Day after day no lions in the area, and then someone came in late one afternoon and reported a pride a couple of miles away. So he grabbed his camera and drove away. And never came back. Next morning they found his car, with the camera mounted on a window, and under the trees nearby was some disturbed ground. No sign ever found of him, so they packed up his property and shipped it home.
When the family was sorting through the stuff someone noticed that the film in the movie camera had been shot, so the had it developed, and at the memorial service they decided to show it so his final nature shoot would be seen. At first it showed a pride in their late-afternoon positions, sound asleep in various positions. Then the camera jiggled a bit and got steady, apparently when he put it on the window mount. It was still for a couple of minutes and then, yeah, the guy showed up in the frame. Walking into the middle of the pride. He stood there waving at the camera, then leaned over and patted a lioness on the butt. Upon which she woke up, reared up and pulled him down, at which the rest of them woke up and helped demonstrate the killing/feeding techinque of the lion on two-leg prey.
I don't know if the Darwin Awards were in effect at the time, but if not he should get a delayed award or something.
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