Grizzly Charges Woman: The Real Problem? How We Talk About Animals

Yellowstone National Park will open its south entrance on Friday, so get the ambulance ready for tourists who don't understand what the WILD means in wild animals.

A recent video from NBC Montana shows another person getting too close to a grizzly bear and guess what happens.

You know why they call them grizzly? It's because if they get ahold of you, it will be a grizzly site for emergency workers. People amaze me. No one ever walks up to a rattlesnake and tries to befriend it, so why park animals?

We see all the animals at the zoo and you can even feed some of them at pet them.

Wrong message. It doesn't make sense to me. All the Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks guys tell us not to feed the animals but then you go to the zoo and you can feed a giraffe. Zoos are important places to learn about animals, but maybe we should be emphasizing more of the dangers that come with animal interaction.

When we talk about animals we use human characteristics to describe them.

Bears, for instance, are just mothers protecting their kids. Wrong message. It's a sow guarding her cubs. Look at all the movies, animated or not, with talking animals, and in relationships with humans. It softens the real facts about animals. They are wild. They are killers, and they are survivors with very small brains but an internal instinct that views everything as a threat or a meal. Hell, the way things are going in Billings, people have brains and rational thinking, yet look at the problems we have in our town.

I know they're so cute and if we just show them we love them and pet them then they will love us back.

Wrong again.

Let's face it, there will always be stupid people in this world that will be oblivious to common sense. In Montana, we know better. Our animal attacks are usually surprise attacks, not ones initiated by a Canon EOS or cell phone. See ya tomorrow at 5.