2016 SEEMS TO BE THE YEAR OF PEOPLE behaving stupidly around the animals in Yellowstone National Park. People keep getting gored while attempting to take selfies with buffaloes. A baby buffalo had to be euthanized when well-meaning but ignorant tourists tried to save it from the mild chill. And now, this.
Jody Tibbitts, a tour guide based out of Jackson Hole, posted the above video to his Facebook feed this week. While on a tour, one of his guests took a video of a wild elk. Tibbitts can then be heard warning a guest from a nearby car to move. “Ma’am! Ma’am!” he says, “Can you please — yeah.”
The “yeah” was because the elk charged her. What happens next is off-screen, but Tibbitts says the woman tripped and the elk pulled back at the last second, saving her from being trampled.
Tibbitts then said, “I was just going to tell you you’re too close to that elk. And that’s why.”
Talking to East Idaho News, Tibbitts said, “Literally on a daily basis I’m having to tell people they’re way too close to animals. I’ve even seen folks chase bears into the woods for a picture.”
So, we thought this didn’t need to be said, but: stay away from wild animals. They did not sign up for a close-up in your photo, and could reasonably interpret your approach as hostile. Yellowstone requires that visitors stay 25 yards (75 feet) from animals. If you need to get a close-up, maybe invest in a telephoto lens.
Featured photo by Yellowstone National Park
matadornetwork.com
I work at home. I’m lucky enough to earn my living as an illustrator and cartoonist and it affords me the opportunity to work from a modest home studio instead of enduring the slow torture of a daily commute as I did for many years. The hours are flexible, I can work pantsless. It’s great. I highly recommend it. But…
There is a time of year when my self imposed exile from civilized society has a few drawbacks. That time of year is now: Cold and Flu Season.
You see, while I work at home in a lovely hermetically sealed climate controlled environment, my family does not. My wife and daughter venture outdoors on a daily basis both making their way to separate schools, one as an employee the other as a student. The end result is the same.
At the end of the day, after bathing in a communal bacterial soup made up of unrestrained coughs and sneezes issued forth from the mouths of several hundred children these two ladies I cherish above all others return to the hearth carrying a horrifying array of pathogens curated by the youth of central New Jersey. The germs they bring home might incite a mild cough, cold or infection in a normal human being, but since I essentially live in a bubble the consequences are dire. What would normally manifest as the sniffles will, in my unsuspecting immune system, mutate into end stage tuberculosis.
Hyperbole aside, for the sake of sad shut-ins like me please wash your hands and if your kids are sick, for God’s sake keep them home.
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The love of God has been extended
To a fallen race
Through Christ the savior of all men
There’s hope in saving grace
The love of God is greater far
Than gold or silver ever could afford
It reaches past the highest star
And covers all the world
It’s power is eternal, eternal
It’s glory is supernal, supernal
When all this earth shall pass away
There’ll always be the love of God
It goes beneath the deepest stain
That sin could ever leave
Redeeming souls to live again
Who will on Christ believe, will believe
Oh, the love of God is greater far
Than gold or silver ever could afford
It reaches past the highest star
And covers all the world
His power is eternal, eternal
His glory is supernal, supernal
When all this earth shall pass away
There’ll always be the love Of God, precious love of God
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