Vacation Season Cautions: Large Animals Can Be Dangerous

Vacation season is starting up; this weekend is Memorial Day weekend, the start of traditional tourist season here in the Great Land as well as many other tourist destinations around the United States. A lot of those tourist attractions involve being outdoors, in or near wild places, and seeing the wildlife that lives in those places.

Some of that wildlife can be dangerous. While we all get the occasional chuckle over some halfwit that tries to get a selfie with a bear or pokes a bison with a stick or some other idiocy and gets what he had coming to him, large animals can be dangerous even when we humans do nothing wrong at all, and a couple of recent incidents have shown just how that can happen. The first was right here in Alaska:

Troopers say they received a report at 11:52 a.m. on Sunday that a cow moose had charged two men, kicking one of them. Medical crews were called and later pronounced the man dead at the scene. The moose was no longer in the area by the time first responders arrived.
Troopers later confirmed to Alaska’s News Source that the incident occurred near a residence in a neighborhood when the incident occurred and that the two men charged by the moose were not related.
No further information was available as of Sunday night.

That's a sad outcome, especially since by all accounts the two men involved do not appear to have done anything wrong. Homer, it should be noted, is a small town surrounded by moose habitat. Calving season is underway right now, and cow moose are very protective of their offspring - they lose a lot of them to bears - and at this point, it appears that the subjects of this moose's aggression were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Massachusetts: Bear Drags Car Crash Victim's Body Into Woods

Another incident in Wyoming, this one in Grand Teton National Park, appears to be the same kind of event; there is, again, no indication that the people involved did anything wrong, other than perhaps not being best equipped for a bear encounter.

A grizzly bear attack on a man in Wyoming’s Grand Teton National Park is the second grizzly bear attack in less than a week.
Park officials said they received a report on Sunday about “a 35-year-old male visitor from Massachusetts who was seriously injured by a bear in the area of the Signal Mountain Summit Road,” the National Park Service said in a news release Monday.
Following an investigation, park officials have determined “the incident was a surprise encounter with two grizzly bears.”
The earlier bear attack occurred in the Canadian Rockies.
The man, who was airlifted by helicopter to a nearby ambulance, is in stable condition, according to the park service, and expected to make a full recovery.

Bears are intelligent animals with complex behavior; it's hard to tell what any given bear may do at any given time.

If your vacation plans involve traveling to any place where there are animals such as moose, bears, or bison, exercise all proper caution. Be aware of your surroundings at all times. Keep any food you're carrying tightly wrapped. Carry bear spray or, if local laws and your inclinations allow it, a firearm. (Up here I never go into the woods without at least a major-caliber sidearm.) If you encounter a big critter, don't make eye contact, watch them, and try to slowly remove yourself from the area.

Summer's coming! Vacation season is starting up, and for all of you readers who are traveling this summer, may your vacations be fun, restful, and without incident - and may you observe any wildlife safely, from an appropriate distance.