Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
People do this all the time. In the last fifteen years of my mom's life she volunteered as a docent at the Tucson Zoo. Each weekly phone call I would get the run down on how some angry parent would chew her out for insisting that they pull their child back to safety from the dangerous situation they'd place it it to get a photo.
My sister and I laugh about it, recalling that our parents did the same thing when we were kids. She was once encouraged to get closer to some animal, and it was only because she started screaming that our dad gave up.
Not one bit, that is the point that many of us have been trying to make. Had it wished to do so the young bison would have easily caught any one of the children, and then the results would have been tragic, not funny. The animal was young and inexperienced and only irritated, not enraged.
Rodeo riders get chased and caught and trampled by buffalos a hundred times a year, and are rarely injured, and never killed. Pit bulls and Rotweilers KILL an American every two weeks, and have done so for decades -- where's your outrage?.
I do not think bison riding is a sport in U.S. rodeo.
"From 1989 to 2009, 16 bull or steer riders died from thoracic compression injuries -- blows to the chest. Of those, nearly all were wearing protective vests. None of the five rodeo contestants who died of head injuries -- including two bull riders -- were wearing helmets."
And that is with protective equipment and people trained to distract animals from thrown riders.
Not all fatal dog attacks are by "Pit bulls and Rotweilers", by the way. And the exposure to dogs is much higher than the exposure to rodeo animals. Not a good comparison.
Many, many years ago I worked around horses and cows. I have had my toes stepped on, had horses try to crush me, I been nipped, and kicked. Fortunately; I never got a severe kick from the hind legs. The horses were relatively safe around their sides (except for getting your toes stepped on and crushed against the stall wall). Cows would get you no matter what side you were on – especially if they were off the range and not used to captivity. These animals are strong and dangerous and if you don't know exactly what you are doing; you are going to get hurt or worse. Plus they have been domesticated to some degree.
Wild animals take the danger up just one more notch. Talk to any hunter that has ever tangled with a doe or a buck. They will tell you that pound for pound deer can hold their own. A bull buffalo can weight almost twenty times what many of our average whitetail deer weigh.
Funny, an elk is completely overmatched against a bison, usually being less than half their size. However, while this thread is about bison, we should be reminded that a bull elk, especially during the rut, can be very aggressive and dangerous. Just as with bison, foolish ignorant tourists to our national parks have gotten in trouble with them. A bull elk wearing a rack can kick or gore a wolf or cougar to death, and most surely could do the same to a human. On one long ago fall visit to Yellowstone recall a mature bull staring intently at me even though I was 40-50 yards away. Got the message and quickly gave him another 50 yards, at which time he resumed browsing.
We were just at Yellowstone. Everywhere you went there were signs, leaflets and other notices saying, in effect, "These are WILD ANIMALS. DO NOT APPROACH THEM OR YOU ARE A COMPLETE IDIOT." This warning was written in every imaginable language, except perhaps Urdu.
And yet, we were driving up the road and here came a dozen bison with a couple of calfs. What do people do? THEY GET OUT OF THEIR CARS WITH THEIR KIDS AND APPROACH THE THINGS. I mean, five-ten feet. I asked my wife to videotape the fools so that we could sell the footage of the animal rampage later on. It would have paid for our trip.
The ones that get me are the fools who see a black bear on the side of the road and they stop and get out of their cars and get within 50 feet of it "taking pictures of the cute bear". Good lord. Some of them even let their children get that close so they can get a pic of the kids *and* the bear in the same shot.
In the other nature threads running on rabid beaver; I would not want to be the swimmers that were attacked. The one woman swimmer was 80 years old; she was very lucky to have survived.
What makes wildlife especially dangerous is that they are not couch potatoes. They have to stalk or forage for their food. They constantly have to keep moving – either running to stay alive or running for the next meal. They do not have a lot of fat; it is mainly all mussel.
There are a lot of people that have the Disney mentality around animals. They want to sing and dance holding paws and hoofs as they spin in a circle. They were brought up with the “animals are our friends” - except I don't think that the animals ever signed that contract!
I read the title of this post 5 different times today before opening it, and each and every time I read it as "Why would you buy your kid a pet buffalo?"
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
