Stupid is as stupid does

I was watching this show on Animal Planet. These guys were in a multiple-day sailboat race in the Gulf of Mexico and their boat overturned during the night. The boat sank and they had to float around in their life jackets for a couple of days in shark-infested waters.

Now, I would think that a channel named Animal Planet would be on the animals’ side. But noooooooo. The sharks are bad guys! Why would anybody get into a basically unstable craft in a shark’s dining room? They entered the food chain, and not at a good level. They truly deserve a Darwin Award.

The poor maligned sharks are just trying to get by. It is not their fault if people thrash around in the water imitating seals, right down to playing with those big rubber balls.

People fish for sharks and other big game fish by trolling: dragging a colorful, erratically moving chunk of wood or plastic through the water in imitation of  wounded prey, kind of like a surfer. And what part of the name killer whale is not clear?

It is important to remember who we are when we go into the wild. The rules of thumb are: Big things eat littler things; if it has big teeth, don’t go there; and keep your hands and feet inside the vehicle.

Size can be a collective thing. A single piranha is only about as big as your hand. One wolf weighs maybe 50 pounds, but six of them trump you. Oh, I know, there are no recorded deaths by wolf attack in the United States since 1640 something. The key word here is “recorded.”

Russia and the Balkans don’t have any problem owning up. I read somewhere (or maybe I dreamed it) that in the 1600s there were more than 1,000 deaths by wolf attack as the human population began to expand into the Balkan Mountains.

Where is my proof, you say? What about all those Russian paintings with the wolves chasing sleighs? Who hasn’t heard the terrible ending of Grandma in Red Riding Hood? Helloooo! Has anybody heard of the Wolfman? Maybe the reason we don’t hear much about wolf attacks is that, like a Mafia witness, the victims are in no condition to testify. I rest my case.

 Finally, there was the monster hunter show with the guy who thought he had spotted a Bigfoot on his heat-sensing camera, so he ran after it. What, exactly, was his plan when he caught up to it? If this is how we are trying to prove the existence of Bigfoot, I think I know why there have been so few reports. See wolf attacks, above.

Bill Abrams resides, and hones his expertise as a wildlife observer, from his living room arm-chair in Pine Plains.