The stupid things tourist do.

[utvols]

I just got back from hiking in the Smokies today with my girlfriend. When we got back there was a comotion about 20yds. from the trailhead. Well lo and behold on the side of the road down about a 15' embankment were a black bear and two little cubs. Now i'll be the first to admit I got closer than I should have but I made sure there were plenty of tasty looking touristy in front of me. As I watched thinking about hunting season I soon realized how many people had gathered. And how they were getting closer to the bear (momma) for pictures. As the bear continued to forge for food it started up the embankment. I start to feel my heart race as I reach out for my girlfriend and say NOW and pull her away from the action. But the tourist swoon in awe as memories of yoogie bear fill their heads. Then the most ridiculous, idiotic thing I ever saw in my life. An older man maybe wanting to chance fate picked up a pile of wet leaves and threw them towards the bear!!! Obviously he wanted some kind of a reaction from his beloved "Yoogie." Whats more amasing is that 2 days ago a female hiker was killed by a bear in this same park, she soposedly didn't do anything to provoke the bear either. STUPID STUPID STUPID!!!

[Christopher]

I have faith in the "Hand of Darwin" to pluck the ripe ones.

[dongun]

I know you've heard this one, but I can't help it.

Two guys being attacked by a grizzly. One yells, "Run!" The other says, "You can't outrun that bear." First guy responds, "I don't have to outrun the bear, I only have to outrun you."

[JimFox]

Yep!

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Jim Fox

[Gopher .45]

A guy I worked with in Alaska who refused to carry the Forest Service rifles that we were told to carry whist on survey. He carried a .22. His reasoning...he would just shoot one of us in the leg and he would get away safe and never have to worry about lugging a big rifle around. I stayed as far away from that guy as possible.

[kjm]

As a former Park Ranger, I can tell you all sorts of stupid things I've seen. We don't have bears, but we have snakes. Lots of them. Actually, thousands and thousands of them. I saw about 8 snake bite incidents while working there in the park. Without fail, 100% of the victims (if you want to call 'em that) were in the order of prevelance trying to 1. "catch the snake", or 2. "poke the snake with a stick to see if he would strike".
Amazing! The stupidity of people when they are taken out of their natural invirons. What's more, we worked around old piles of brush, logs and fenceposts all day long. We encountered snakes almost every day. Not once in my time there was one Ranger or volunteer bitten by a snake.
Another almost funny thing I noticed is that while I was in the Army, I noticed that a lot of parents taught their kids to run away as fast as they could and flail the arms and scream loudly when a dog they encountered growled at them. What are they thinking? That their child can actually outrun the dog? Maybe it is the security they feel in knowing that dogs are no longer predators with a natural instinct to pursue. They must've given that up when they took the Alpo offer from man! Stupidity. It is these children who will grow up to be the next leaders in HCI.

[Oleg Volk]

I went for a hike in the woods today with my 18yo cousin in tow. I wonder if I would have enjoyed the hike more had I not been scanning for other people, snakes, ticks and inclement weather. Guess there's no going back to the unaware condition.

[CindyH]

Remember "Faces of Death?"

(lady w/video camera):"Here, bear! Hear, bear....." DOH!

Oleg reminded me of when I took Wilderness Survival in college. I was also taking a class where we had just learned about the "Oriental (?) Rat Flea" (Bubonic plague, anyone?) I was convinced that every pine needle that touched my arm as I (almost) slept was a flea! Ahhh!

Also, speaking of stupidity, that class should have been named How NOT to Burn Down a Forest That Has Been Plagued By Drought for Five Years....the guy across the was from me caught his "shelter" (a fallen tree) on fire about eight times...good idea of the teacher to separate everyone to give us the "full" Alone in the Wilderness experience!

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"...you gotta ask yourself one question...do I feel *lucky*?"

[Mike Irwin]

More people are killed/injured by black bear every year than grizzlies. That is, in part, because the ranges overlap a LOT more for black bears & humans, but it's also because a lot of people look at black bears as big dogs, NOT a wild creature capable of making your preliminary funeral arrangements in a matter of moments.

[This message has been edited by Mike Irwin (edited May 24, 2000).]

[LawDog]

Actually, Oleg, I find being alert out in the boonies makes the experience that much better. When you're looking for Jake, you also see the tiny flowers that others miss. Or tracks, shells, pretty stones, etc., etc.

LawDog

[William R. Wilburn]

"If it's tourist season, why can't we shoot them?" -Montana Bumper Sticker

[ctdonath]

Oleg-
The unaware ones don't really see _anything_ around them. Looking for snakes, you see the flowers.

[Danger Dave]

A friend of mine from south Ga. told me about this...

Whenever they have tourists come down to the campgrounds near the swamps & marshes, they ask the tourists if they have pets with them. If they do, they are warned to keep them inside at night. But, of course, some of these citified tourists know more than a bunch of hicks from south Georgia, and so they tie their little apartment yipper dog out on a leash at night. In the morning, guess what? No doggie! It seems a yipper on a leash is an attractive "meal-on-a-string" to a hungry gator and the gators near the parks have figured this out....

Tragically, occasionally small children are taken when they play by the water unattended.

[jeffer]

Heard a story out of south Florida where a woman was warned not to let her pooch walk in certain places. The ranger repeatedly said alligators will eat a dog don’t take it in this area. She knows her dog and it would never do something stupid. The dog charged yapping away at a sunning gator. Guess she didn’t know the gator. Snap--gulp--swim--by doggie. She also got a ticket for taking her dog in an area she wasn’t suppose to.

[George Dickel at Work]

It's been a number of years ago that I read about this incident. I believe it was in Yellowstone a couple wanted some pictures of the bears. Well the wife thought if she could get a bear to lick her face, it would be quite unique. She smeard jelly on her face and walked up to a very large bear. The bear smelled the jelly, stood up on his hind legs and promptly bit off the whole side of her head. By the way, hubby got it all on film. Naturally they killed the bear for attacking and killing a human.

[Miss Demeanors]

Oh the bear just wanted a picinic basket, don't ya know . People just don't think.

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[David Scott]

I still remember an incident from my youth in the Adironndacks, when a guy was brought into town for medical treatment. The yokel had been out at night illegally jack-lighting whitetail deer, and had stumbled across a black bear. Ol' Bruin, disturbed at the loss of beauty sleep, removed half the guy's face with one swipe of a paw.

It's not nice to mess with Mother Nature.

[Jim V]

Jeff Cooper used to tell of the American that loved lions and decided to go to Africa to see them in the wild. He was doing the tourist bit and was letting people know he wanted to see lions. One day as he was sitting at a restaurant in town somebody told him of a pride of lions just out the city limits (or whatever). He jumped in his rental car and off he went. He never came back and after a whild his friend s decided to look for him, all they found was his car along the roadway with his movie camera clamped to the window. No sign of the tourist at all. They gathered up his belongings and shipped everything back to his parents after an extensive search was made.

After a period of time someone at home decided to check the movie camera and found it contained film, the film was developed and then the movie was ran. It showed the tourist's shots of the pride of lions sleeping 25 yards or so from the road. The next few scenes showed the tourist walking from the car toward the lions, stopping to wave every now and then until he reached the sleeping male which he proceded to pet.

Lions 1 Tourist 0

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Ne Conjuge Nobiscum
"If there be treachery, let there be jehad!"

[This message has been edited by Jim V (edited May 24, 2000).]

[Glenn E. Meyer]

Friend of mine is a comparative psychologist who does big cats.

She told me of one in a game park, the kind you drive through. You are supposed to kept the windows up.

Family was driving through the cheetah range with windows down. Cheetah went through the back window and out the other side with the baby.

Big law suit.

[HankB]

Here's a story my cousin witnessed first hand.

Several carloads of tourists were stopped along the road at Yellowstone, watching - and feeding - the bears from their cars. This wasn't good enough for one family. Mom and Dad got out of their car, Mom carrying a camera, Dad carrying a toddler. Mom tries to take picture of toddler as Dad tried to seat him ON ONE OF THE BEARS!! Bear keeps moving away, Mom and Dad pursue. Toddler is now screaming in terror. Bear finally has enough and runs off; Mom and Dad mad at kid for frightening the bear.

I wonder how long that poor kid lived, with parents like that.

[This message has been edited by HankB (edited May 24, 2000).]

[Jack 99]

I blame Disney. I actually saw one Disney special where a family went out in the boonies and "adopted" coyote cubs for a summer. The kids and the cubs were filmed frolicking in the alpine meadows; the whole thing was just about as unreal as you can get. Anyone who's ever been within 50 feet of a coyote knows that only skunks are more rancid and foul. Not only that, 10 seconds of "frolicking" would leave you with so many fleas you would want to die. Funny how reality is just an afterthought in the entertainment world anymore.

Just last week a woman in Colorado lost her arm by sticking it in a tiger's cage. She was a volunteer at an animal rescue center and was showing some tourists how safe it was to put your arm in the cage......

[Kirk D]

Some three or more decades ago, when I was a young'un visiting the Smokies with my parents and some of their friends, we came upon one of the "Oooo, look, bears!" crowds.

The crowd, including my father and his friends started throwing crab apples down to the bears... which the bears appreciatively ate, until the crab apples ran out. Then the bears wanted more, and started running toward the crowd. People can move fairly fast when they want to..

I've had several Smokies bear experiences. Back in college, while backpacking, I came upon a guy carrying a shredded backpack. About a half mile up the trail, he said, he'd encountered a bear who started running toward him. He dropped his backpack and took off. Bear stopped at the backpack, "opened" it, and removed the food. Bears know where the food is.

I ran into a couple bears, myself, on the Appalachian Trail in the Smokies. One night, while in one of the shelters along the trail, a bear came up and started shaking the chain link wire with which they covered the front of the shelters, and pawing the door. It finally went away.

On another occasion, I was approaching a shelter in the late afternoon, and noticed a bear pawing around a campfire circle in front of the shelter. I wasn't too comfortable just standing there..., so I hung my pack in a tree, and slowly edged up to the shelter (the bear was about 20 feet away), and jumped into the shelter and closed the chain link door. Only then did I think "Oh, great.., I've just trapped myself in a cage, with my backpack hanging in a tree for the bear to play with".

But he finally wandered off.

That night, we'd (myself and several other hikers who'd come in that night) just settled down to sleep when we heard some noises. A flashlight revealed a skunk in the shelter, rooting through some open canned food another hiker had brought into the shelter.., but that's another story

I heard, recently, the park service is removing the chain link fronts of those hiking shelters. That ought to make life interesting!

[jeffer]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Kirk D:
The crowd, including my father and his friends started throwing crab apples down to the bears... which the bears appreciatively ate, until the crab apples ran out. Then the bears wanted more, and started running toward the crowd. People can move fairly fast when they want to.. [/quote]

That reminds me of another one, sorry.
First of all every one who has been 18 to 22 and in college may relate to this.
Some guys on spring break (I think) saw a bear while in the Smokey Mountains. Mascot for the frat house! Being intelligent they put a trail of apples leading to the open trunk of the car. The bear ate its way to the trunk and found more apples inside. It climbed in to finish its meal and the lid was slammed shut. After the high fives or whatever you did back then they got in and started for home. The bear decided it wanted to stay and came through the back seat. No one was hurt but I think they had to abandon the car for some time while the bear rearranged the interior.

[bergie]

Tourists x Morons = Tourons
That's what they are called many places.
bergie

[PEA SHOOTER]

Birthdays are like Grizzer bears!!
"They come up real fast and there aint no gettin away!

[This message has been edited by PEA SHOOTER (edited May 24, 2000).]