The only time I ran into an unafraid creature in the backcountry that interacted toward me was indeed a marmot. When hiking Longs Peak it peeked into the shelter I was resting in and looked at me intensely and wouldn’t leave when I tried to shoo it away. Thankfully it never crossed the threshold or I would have been afraid of being bitten.
(Then there were the one or two times where I saw a skunk in the open. Thankfully they didn’t move toward me in search of a handout. But they were more unafraid of me than any other animal of any size was in the wild, other than the marmot. They eventually did leave the trail, but took their sweet time about it, seemingly ignoring me.)
Yes, the fine is pretty minimal, but they called his Mom.
That guy just lost all respect from his peer group, and probably got a lot of shit from his Mom. His friends and anyone who knows or meets him is going to find out that he was reported to his Mom like a naughty schoolboy. If he planned to be an “influencer” he is going to crash and burn in the shame, plus the unforgetting internet.
I’m tempted to visit his Instagram page and troll with questions about his mom and her dissatisfaction with his behaviour.
The “minor infraction” that he got fined for was petting the marmot. I agree that a park ranger or anybody else in an LEO capacity calling an adult’s parents to complain about his legal violations is way out of line.
I think you maybe have a different picture of internet life from how it is in some digital habitats. This guy appears to be an established influencer and musician at age 23 with well over a third of a million followers and various brand partnership deals. I don’t get the impression that many, if any, of his followers are going to lose respect for him just because he got familystalked by an overzealous park ranger for illegally petting a cute critter in a park.
This summer I was at Philmont Scout Camp, one of the sites had an entire family of skunks who were completely unafraid of humans, happily checking out tents, climbing into packs, without a care in the world. They’d begrudgingly wander off a bit if you kicked dirt at them.
We were having dinner at our campsite at Point Reyes and a skunk wandered underneath our table. My girlfriend nearly had a panic attack but I told her to just relax and it would move on.
Sure enough it waddled away and went to visit the next campsite. But the people there did not relax…there was shouting and yelling and people running away. I don’t know if anyone got sprayed but my girlfriend and I got a chuckle out of seeing the chaos.
Thirty years ago I was visiting Half Moon Bay, California with my brother and his older child, then two years old. There, we met a California ground squirrel at his burrow overlooking the coast. He was remarkably comfortable around us humans, though he did not appreciate the peach pit I dropped down his burrow. He was pissed. I will not repeat the language he used, though it was quite colorful.
Ringtails are kind of like that, too. They sort of look like a mutant or albino raccoon. One campout s I was falling asleep late at night I heard the distinctive “clink” of the lid of the crockpot being removed. He didn’t care in the slightest about me, my flashlight, or anything. I do make a pretty good chicken and rice, I gotta say.
A commercial for Uneekor just started popping up on the local Kansas City station.
Ref: DDG AI
Complete simulator packages—including enclosure, projector, mat, and accessories—typically run from about $4,500 to $30,000, depending on the monitor and setup. Software may cost extra; GSPro is approximately $250/year, while Uneekor Pro software is around $199/year.
