On 13 September 2015 at 23:51, Bruce A. Metcalf <[email protected]> wrote:
> > And the attitude I mentioned? The week before we arrived, some moron put > her cell phone on a selfie stick and leaned up against a bison for a photo. > She does not have a photo. She does not have an unbroken cell phone. She > does not have all her blood on the inside any more. > > Two weeks before that, a man with years of experience in the park went off > alone to look for bears. Not smart. He got between a cow and two cubs and > was turned into bear food. > > I mean, what part of "wild animal" do these people not understand? > This is unfortunately very common. Many years ago for a 4 month period I worked as a manager of a rather dingy lakeside hotel in Kenya. During that time - the hotel next door had an Australian woman who got bitten into two pieces by a hippopotamus because she went too close to take a picture of its baby. Another tourist got critically gored by a wild buffalo when he decided to step out into the bush at night (to see the "nightlife"). I think we have distanced ourselves so far from nature, that it seems something benign out of a national geographic feature -- while reality is these are wild and dangerous animals. On grizzly bears .. there is this really amazing documentary by Werner Herzog "Grizzly Man" about this guy who went to live among the grizzlies (much like Dian Fossey and the Gorillas...) and shot extensive footage of himself and the grizzlies. Eventually him and his girlfriend got eaten by the grizzlies on camera (luckily that footage is not shown in the documentary)
