The animals in our National Parks truly are wild and even those that seem mild may attack if provoked.
Recently, a woman was attacked by a buffalo that appears to have become enraged when someone in another group threw something at it and hit it. Following a friend who also got too close, they became the buffalo’s target after angered by being hit in the side.
The CNN report includes the woman’s video, in which you can see the object hitting the buffalo, followed by the buffalo bucking and charging the first humans it sees.
"I thought it was the end," Cathy Hayes told CNN by phone late Wednesday.
Hayes said she was vacationing in Yellowstone on Monday with her husband and a friend. The group was driving through the park when they spotted a bison.
"My friend is from California, and had never seen a bison before," she said. "So we pulled over and went to get a closer look."
Minutes later, the bison attacked. And it was all caught on tape.
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Classic case of ‘collateral damage’ Mike? Typical ……………….. shall I say more?
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A fine example of people not following the rules. I’ll likely be doing a post about people not following the rules later in our trip, but, in this case, it got a person injured and could have gotten someone killed.
OMG Mike – She had a lucky escape. I hope this is a lesson to a lot of people – especially the idiot who threw the stick – they should be locked up. This story reminds me, I have Death in Yellowstone on my reading list – I need to remember to order it.
Most people aren’t even going to hear about it and, no matter how much it’s publicized, there will be people who ignore the rules, didn’t read them, or never heard of them. I read part of the way through “Death of Yellowstone” three years ago. I found it again a couple of weeks before we left on this trip, but didn’t get back to it. I do know that there has already been several deaths this year, though none by animal attack — just by falls from high places, drowning, and a suicide.
Mike, I entirely agree that it was due to people not following rules. The point that I was making is also the same. Collateral damage, which has now become a mantra of sorts, inevitably arises because some rule was not followed by someone somewhere. Just look at the oil spills. When the true story comes out, we will find that a number of rules have not been followed.
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It reminds me of a story a ranger told years ago. A man was trying to push a bear into his car where his wife was sitting. The man wanted to take a picture of the wife with the bear. The ranger almost had a heart attack when he saw it.
Some friends of ours from NY drove out to one of the Western national parks years ago. When it got dark they pulled the car off the side of the road and slept. The next morning they were horrified that they were inches from a severe drop off and that there was no guard rail to protect them. They could easily have driven off the cliff in the dark. A Westerner would have known the danger but would no doubt be just a ignorant dealing with safety in big cities.
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When I was an 11 year old, I visited Yellowstone for the first time. It was 1963. There were bears all over the place, even in the campgrounds. The worst was when we saw, on an isolated stretch of road, a car pulled over, with the people inside feeding three bears — a mama grizzly and her two cubs.
So far as the drop off, I was thinking today of what some folks would think of the narrow mountain tracks we were on in the car, often with a steep drop off on one side or the other.
Hi Mike,
It’s been awhile since I was at Yellowstone, but I do remember all of the signs warning the visitors to stay in their cars. Just seeing signs like those were enough to make me take heed. Like you said, these animals are WILD, not caged up in a zoo.
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Where it’s really interesting is coming across these large animals when you’re on a trail, which happened to us twice three years ago when we were in northwest Wyoming — a buffalo at Old Faithful and a moose at Menor’s Ferry in the Tetons.
I sure wouldn’t be throwing things at it little lone getting out of my vehicle.
I wish more people had that kind of good sense. Unfortunately, there are a bunch of real dopes out there — and sometimes they seem to show up at the same places.
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