Buffalo gal

I've been to a few of our National Parks, and they're all amazingly beautiful. They're also amazingly wild. And that makes them a little bit scary. 

When I was doing my National Parks thing with my college roommate (and great and good friend) Joyce 50 years ago - there were all sorts of warning signs all over the place about being cautious. Very cautious. These ranged from a speed limit of 5 m.p.h. - that was in Sequoia or Yosemite - to signs alerting campers not to sleep in the clothing you cooked in (bears) to bison and moose crossing signs. 

The two scariest things that happened on my long ago cross country camping trip was that 5 m.p.h. speed limit - talk about a steep and curving road - and a couple of close encounters with wild animals.

It may have been in Grand Teton that we visited the campsite next to ours to hang out with some fellow campers. (I believe a joint or two was involved.) When we got back to our campsite, there were a pair of black bear cubs sitting there in the well of our tent. We figured mama bear wasn't far away, but didn't want to wait to find out. We scrambled over to our car - a Karmann Ghia - and spent a sleepless night trying to sleep sitting up in the front seat. Even after the bear family had decamped, we didn't feel all that comfortable getting back into our sleeping bags. At dawn, we packed up and moved on.

Later on in our trip, in the Shenandoah National Park in Virginia - midweek, October - we were pretty much the only campers around. A park ranger came over to our campsite to warn us about bears, making sure that all our food was secure, that we wouldn't wear our cooking clothing to bed, that we wouldn't slather on any hand cream (another bear attractant), etc. 

Check. Check. Check.

We snuggled down into our sleeping bags, "safe" in our little two-person backpack tent. Just as we were drifting off, we heard sniffing. Loud sniffing. Around the tent. 

Joyce and I reached out and grabbed each other's hand. 

Bear.

It had to be. 

Bear.

Neither one of us said a word. We both went motionless. Breathless.

There may be atheists in foxholes, but I can assure you there aren't many/any in flimsy two-person backpack tents when a bear is sniffing around.

And then, a cloud passed on, and the full moon lit up our surrounds. And we could see that what was sniffing around our tent wasn't a bear. It was a skunk. Which may have been worse. Fortunately, the polecat moved on. 

Anyway, I do know up close and personal that you need to be careful when you find yourself in a National Park. And I can only imagine that, given our litigious society, the warning signs are a lot more present than they were back in 1972. 

Still, people ignore those signs.

A few years ago, it was the knucklehead who was looking for a place to swim in Yellowstone. Unfortunately, he jumped into an acidic hot spring. Not only did he boil himself to death, the acid bath caused his body to dissolve.

The young woman who decided to get up close and personal with a Yellowstone bison was more fortunate. While the initial reports said the woman had died, turns out she was just gored. She was tossed in the air, and she was punctured. She was ambulanced to a hospital in Idaho. But she survived. 

Here's what went down:

The bison was walking near a boardwalk at Black Sand Basin, just north of Old Faithful, when the woman approached it on Monday, according to a park statement. She got within 10 feet (3 meters) before the animal gored her and tossed her 10 feet into the air...

Park officials say it's the first reported bison goring this year. The park statement said bison are unpredictable, have injured more people in Yellowstone than any other animal and can run three times faster than humans.

Park regulations require visitors to remain more than 25 yards (23 meters) away from bison. (Source: NPR)

What an idiot this buffalo gal was. 

And, yes, I know that the gorer was a bison, not a buffalo. But, let's face it, Americans pretty much use the words interchangeably, and the buffalo/bisons don't really care. Plus, there's no song about "Bison Gals" - not that I know of, anyway.

Whether she's a Buffalo Gal or a Bison Gal, that goree is sure one lucky idiot indeed.