Don’t you love it when dumb people try to outsmart smart animals?
Item: Stay At Home Moms – Immigration has been a big topic in the news lately, but here’s a story from the Wall Street Journal that you may not have seen.
We all know that Europe is just one big happy family now, with borders being virtually erased, but there is one group of Europeans who evidently did not get the message. Scientists are trying to keep Europe’s largest land mammal from going extinct by changing their immigration patterns.
It seems that, unlike our illegal aliens, bison are respectful of borders. So much, they won’t even go into other countries for a little sex. This means that the Polish bison herd is inbreeding itself to extinction.
So, wildlife experts are laying out trails for the bison to follow that lead to opportunities in other countries to fool around with foreigners. It’s kind of like Sweden for men, I think.
The experts are urging the bison to follow trails by putting out hay and beets, which they call “steering meals.” You and I know that the experts are making two big mistakes.
First, just like kids, four-legged beasts detest beets.
Secondly, before the bison could find the hay, it was consumed by deer, elk and wild boar. Pigs especially, it seems, crave beets.
Thus far, the $4 million program hasn’t produced a single bison interested in international travel. Very much like myself, I might add.
Item: Sleeping With Cattle – If the preceding story causes you to stay awake nights with worry, you may need a little rest at the Sun Ranch in Montana. According to Outside magazine, they are using a “bulletless approach” to keeping wolves from eating their livestock.
For only $1,450, you can spend three days and two nights sleeping in a tent amongst the cattle where, as a human decoy, you’ll enjoy “an upscale lodging experience with a strong canine experience.” This is a bargain, because Wyoming and New Mexico ranchers get to “enjoy” the same canine experience and it costs them a lot more than $1,450.
Item: Condors Love Junk Food – As a kid, I worked on a ranch near a wilderness area that was the sole remaining home of the condor. It was less than 10 miles away as the crow flies – or in this case, as the condor flies.
Condors are North America’s largest bird and the ones I saw closely resembled what most people lovingly refer to as buzzards.
They are uglier than a mud fence and stink to high heaven. I once saw a group of condors dining on the carcass of a four-day-dead cow. I first thought it was the cow making the nauseating smell, but when the buzzards left, so did the smell.
I assume that the government created a sanctuary in a wilderness area far from people because if anyone ever saw a condor in person, they would no longer be interested in saving them. They look like something that escaped from Jurassic Park.
The condors were saved by captive breeding programs, which produced 242 chicks. But when turned back into the wild, they did not reproduce enough to keep the species alive. This is, according to The Economist, because the condor mommas keep feeding their young babies junk food.
And I do mean “junk.” Things like bottle caps, insulators, plastic pipe, bolts and nails. One dead chick had 37 bottle caps inside it!
To keep the condors from feeding their chicks junk food, they are being brought in for “micro-trash aversion training,” in which the scientists place before each adult bird a buffet of one rotting carcass and a pile of junk. If the condor goes for the junk food, they are lighted up like a bulb with an electric shock.
The scientists hope the birds will learn their lesson and then, will keep from killing two birds with one stone by passing on this information to their chicks – kind of like an acquired instinct, if there is such a thing.
Please keep in mind that we are talking here about a bird so stupid that it eats rotting cows and feeds bolts to its babies. You tell me – just exactly who are the birdbrains, here? Readers with questions or comments for Lee Pitts may write to him in care of this publication. |
