View from the North 40: Maybe we have fallen down a rabbit hole

I realized two things this week about the often adverse relationship between animals and man — one thing because of the lack of headlines and the other because of the wealth of headlines.

First, both Yellowstone and Glacier national parks had record numbers of people visiting this summer, but we hardly had any headlines about people getting injured or killed by wildlife. A couple tourists got injured in Yellowstone, but I just don’t recall and cannot find anything about injuries in Glacier. The two human deaths caused by grizzlies this year happened outside national parks.

Maybe that woman getting de-pantsed so spectacularly in South Dakota last year finally left an impression on tourists.

Gore me, maul me, trample me, shred me, head slam me into the dirt, toss me through the air like I’m a little, bitty rag doll, but do not hook your horn in my pant-waist and spin me about like we’re playing bloody crack-the-whip and then rip my pants right of my body — especially if you’re going to parade around the area with my pants hanging off your horn while everybody and their child takes video and photos.

I’m sure all the tourists this summer were saying some version of “Harold, stay away from that bison. Harold, get back here. Harold! If you take one step closer, I swear I’ll post the first humiliating meme myself. Harold, my camera is running.”

And the second point, the counterpoint perhaps, is that all the animals outside the parks are the ones causing trouble this year, running around in our human habitats with all the common sense and respect of a tourist. I don’t know what’s going on, but I could fill this column, and them some, just by listing the headlines one after the other.

I’m talking about stories of everything from a dog stealing the ball off the field during an Irish cricket match and a cat having to be rescued by a U.S. flag in a fall from a tier in a Miami football stadium to bears swimming in, then crushing, an inflatable pool in Massachusetts and a badger needing to be rescued from the window well of a Colorado home.

That's just the beginning.

Firefighters in North Carolina responding to a report of a road hazard had to try to wrangle a bull that got loose on the highway. Firefighters wrangling a bull? And it wasn’t even in a tree.

Could be worse.

For weeks, animal control officers in Maryland have been hunting five zebras running wild and wary in Prince George’s County — that’s the interstate-riddled urban/suburban county that borders the eastern edge of Washington, D.C.

A rhino escaped from its enclosure in a Nebraska zoo. A Bengal tiger escaped from its enclosure at an Indian Zoo.

An African serval cat has been running loose for more than a month in California. Not to be outdone, Alabama is dealing with two servals, think small leopards, that escaped from a barn two weeks ago.

Feel free to hum a few bars of “Born Free” right now. Or maybe that’s just me.

A large snake escaped into the wilds of New York City and slithered into a storm drain. The snake was pulled out right away … or was it? An urban legend is born.

A witness videoed a cow going through a McDonald’s drive-up window in Wisconsin. To be fair, it’s unclear whether the cow was there by choice because it was locked in the backseat of a Buick sedan. The witness got straight to heart of the situation when she told an Associated Press reported “Who puts a cow in a Buick?” Indeed. That’s how you normally treat a Chevy.

But I digress.

As long as we’re talking animals and transportation. A dog in England boarded a Plymouth Citybus and took a tour of the city before the driver figured out the dog wasn’t riding with its human, or any human at all. He was literally just being a tourist.

A little 2-inch long gecko had a much larger adventure when it took a “4,000-mile trip in a traveler’s bra” from Barbados to Britain, UPI said prompting two questions with their misleading wording.

1) How did that woman not know she had a gecko in her bra? Well, the bra was in her suitcase, but still 2) How did a whole live gecko get past security? Meanwhile I couldn’t get one ounce extra of shampoo through without triggering a full pillage and plunder of my luggage and my person.

And it appears that the unexpected tourist gets a permanent resident status in the U.K.

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And the zebras are still on the lam in the land of free-range elephants and donkeys at http://www.facebook.com/viewfromthenorth40 .