virividox said:
Dont get me started on how stupid people can be. Just talk to any Ranger with the Park Service or Forest service, or for that matter anyone that deals with tourists. I spent a summer in Yellowstone National Park working with the Rangers and I personally met some of the stupidest people on earth. Examples:
Picture a Bison (buffalo), 3000 pounds of unpredictable muscle with sharp horns. In early summer they shed their winter coats. Sometimes the hair is tangled and it dangles off the animal until all of it falls off. One day, a ranger came into the backcountry office, where I worked, and was fuming. It seems two college aged girls wanted a special souvenier and were just about to rip the dangling hair off a bison. Also, there were countless reports of people trying to pet them, scare them, push them with their car, and my favorite, place their kid on their back for a picture.
Another favorite, in Yellowstone, I am sure most of you know, there are all kinds of amazing thermal features. Geysers, hot springs, bubbling mud pools, and boiling lakes. There are always signs posted around the more dangerous features. Many of the boiling lakes are surrounded by land that is only few inches thick. This is very dangerous because it doesnt take much weight to break through the ground and fall into the boiling water. Many times, I or one of the rangers would have to yell at people that walked right to the edge of the shore, ignoring the signs. A lot of times they had their whole families with them.
Or how about the guy that wanted to get a picture of a bear "kissing" his little girl. He smeared honey all over her face attracted a black bear to the car and got his camera ready. Bears have rough tongues, like cats, so when the bear licked the kids face, he licked her skin off along with the honey. The resulting screams caused the bear to freak out and he mauled the kid.
That is only a tiny bit of the idiocy I have witnessed.
