If the People Were Bears and the Bears Were People

What would you do?

Take a look at the photo above.  Now imagine that those five people are nervous grizzly bears (or murderous zombies, if that would put some fear in your heart) and the four black bears are you, a human mother, with three small children.  Now imagine that there are eight more nervous grizzly bears on the other side of the bridge and still another six or seven at the end of the bridge. You are, wisely, scared to death of those grizzlies.

You, as the human mother, have to get your kids safely across the bridge with all those dangerous grizzly bears (or zombies) around.  What would you do?  Would it be easier for you if those grizzly bears just stood there on the edge of the road and allowed you to proceed down the middle?  What if they decided to follow along beside you?  Would that make you more comfortable?  What if the grizzly bears decided to run along beside you?

The video below was shot in Yellowstone National Park and recently released by Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks.  Watch it and see if you could do any better than the mother bear did in getting her frightened kids across the bridge.

The general rule in Yellowstone National Park is to stay 25 to 100 yards away from bears and other unpredictable wildlife.  These tourists didn’t pay any attention to that rule.  Nor did they pay any attention to the Park Ranger that told them to get off the bridge and into their cars before the bears got too close.  These cubs are over a year old, but if they had been this year’s cubs, that mother would have been far more protective and much more dangerous.

I offered up some pointers on safety in bear country awhile back, but that mostly made sense if you live around bears or happen to be hiking in the back country.  In situations like in this video, one would need to apply some common sense – apparently no one, except the bears, did.

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