So how’s the weather in ol’ gray Missou? I was born there, but moved to Billings after 4th grade. I miss the snow, but not the gray nasty shitty weather for 4 months
Heard a story about a park ranger stopping a dad from killing his child by covering him in honey so he could get a picture of the nice black bear licking it off.
Ranger says - what are you, stupid? That’s a wild animal that would likely maul and kill your child and you.
Dad - But we’re in Yellowstone Park… doesn’t that mean all the animals are trained?
Another favourite anecdote of growing up in Montana - game ranger driving along, sees whole family stopped on side of highway next to animal crossing sign, cameras and binoculars out and ready but no animals in sight. Unable to stop himself, ranger stops and asks them if he can be of assistance. Dad of family asks when animals were due by,
Ranger, being a native Montanan, checks his watch and says 'Normally, they’re not this late. Something must have held them up." before driving away cackling loudly to himself.
Goes to show - dumb asses are everywhere, not just limited to Yankees…
It’s the Eye of the Cougar
The reflection of light
Racing through our yard in the twilight
And the sole cat for miles
Stalks his prey on our lawn
But we can’t see him 'cept
For the Eye of the Cougar
*Here, the locals swim with 'em. Can you believe that?
*Scroll to bottom, to pix of a bunch of people standing on a diving platform. There’s a gator nesting site directly across the river from that platform. There’s a string of pool bouys up to keep people from swimming over there, but it doesn’t keep gators from chilling out in the public swimming area, or right underneath the diving platform.
Dig it. This is what happens when you swim with gators.
I say, let 'em harrass the poor things. Then we’ll have something to submit to the Darwin Awards.
There was an FSU student about 5-10 years back that got himself drowned and partially eaten by a big bull gator in one of the northern springs. He was spotted during a glass bottom boat tour…
Tour announcer: Oh, and down there you can see a gator has caught a deer for it’s lunch.
Tourist: Dude, that “deer” is wearing sneakers!
That’s seriously how they found the body. They had to go pry him out of a gator hole. Lesson: don’t swim, or even wade, anywhere you suspect there might be large gators.
A friend of ours used to cave dive at the bottom of that swimming hole at Wakulla Springs. Us Yankees couldn’t believe anyone was that stupid to swim that close to gators when he took us out there (but, hey, these guys were cave divers, they were already taking their life into their hands.)
Meanwhile, a woman from a swampy, alligator-ridden southern state recently asked me if she should dump boiling water on her windshield to loosen the wiper blades, which are frozen in place. Survival skills have to be learned.
The Triangle area in North Carolina handled it right: took a small town named Cary and set it aside for Yankee resettlement. (Cary = Containment Area for Relocated Yankees) [That it was planned is a joke; that it worked out that way, isn’t.]
– Poly (part of the 20% of Pilot, NC, that was born in Northern New York)
Threads like this make me think of watching Faces of Death. My favorite is Harry feeding the bear while his wife videotapes the deal. Harry becomes Bear Chow.
He’s a writer from Florida - started out as a reporter for the Miami Herald {I think he’s still a columnist} and graduated to writing blackly comic anarchic crime novels in which imbecile tourists, corrupt property magnates, sugar barons, theme-park developers, local politicians and the like get their ultimate comeuppance at the hands of Mother Nature, with the assistance of various free-spirited protagonists who are fighting back against the destruction of the environment. If you haven’t read him, you should check him out - he’s an excellent writer: seriously funny, bitingly satirical, and any comparison was meant entirely as a compliment. Stormy Weather is a personal favourite, and might be a good place to start - although, as previously mentioned by John Carter, Tourist Seasondoes feature hapless tourists devoured by alligators…
My mom’s up in Glasgow (she lives in Portland, OR, normally) visiting her family and said she’s heard a warning from the weather services she’s never heard before - going outside your house is risking your life. Huge blizzard apparently; many degrees below zero and a huge snow dump. Sometimes I miss Montana for that reason - not only can the wildlife kill you, but the weather as well! That state definitely keeps you on your toes!
Didn’t he write the book that the movie Striptease was based upon? I don’t recall if the book had the same name, but it definitely featured most of that cast of characters. He seems a sort of southern Elmo Leonard. Never saw the movie.
