An older fella versus an angry bison. Unless you’re rocking an FE x Henry SPD CRUSR, that math doesn’t quite compute. Nevertheless, that’s exactly the matchup a man faced recently during an outing in Yellowstone National Park.
And just like so many other viral videos we’ve seen rocket across the interwebs over the years, this one played out as expected. Final score: bison 1, tourists 0.
First off, let’s jump to the most important part: 65-year-old Carl Isom-McDaniel is OK and recovering from a wild bison charge that tossed the grandfather some eight feet into the air. The man reportedly suffered multiple breaks to a femur, requiring surgery.
“Even though I was on the ground, he could have stomped me,” Isom-McDaniel said from his hospital bed. “He could have gored me. He could have done anything.”
Viral video of the attack rocketed across social media over the last week. It shows a massive bison lying on the ground in a camping area, with several bystanders gawking at the scene, including the victim and his grandson. As vehicles pass and others look on, the animal finally becomes agitated with the commotion, ultimately charging the victim.
FAFO: Bison Edition
“We saw the bison and he was down,” Isom-McDaniel said. “He wasn’t showing aggression or anything like that until it picked a target. That target happened to be me. He just kept coming and he was more aggressive and as soon as he got off that tree, he launched me in the air.”
If you’re a sick and twisted sort—like many a good FE reader—you likely found the humor in seeing an old dude try as he may to outrun a bison in the pines, only to get launched like a rodeo clown. It brings a certain Wile E. Coyote Noir kind of vibe. The internet responded as only it can, the memes making themselves.
But at least one other post on social media took an opposing view. On Facebook’s Yellowstone Insiders Hub group, someone posted a Karen-like diatribe on the inhumanity of folks making fun of the poor man.
“Maybe some people have enjoyed a charmed life and have not yet experienced a harsh truth: sometimes a person can do nothing to deserve it and still be subjected to suffering or death. But surely everyone has, at least, witnessed that to be the case.
“I’m disturbed that the still screen shot is already becoming a meme used to elicit laughs.What a sad commentary on society … I implore us not to lose our humanity.”
Ok, we get the sentiment here that someone is shocked and appalled at those finding humor in anyone’s suffering. But there’s a larger issue at hand: contemporary society has nearly universally lost all proper respect for the wild. While our hero doesn’t deserve to get run over by a bison, it’s not hard to find the cause and effect at play.
A Wild Problem
Modern man, armed with selfie sticks and GoPros, has become all too accustomed to paddling the flooded river without a rescue plan or encroaching too close to the toothy critter. We feed the bears and wonder why they snatch up our snickerdoodle dog breeds. We lean out over outcroppings for the perfect Instagram pic before slipping and falling to our deaths.
Or sometimes we get thrown into the air by a pissed off bison that has not forgotten its place, and humanity’s relationship to it, in what remains a wild world once you venture out of suburbia.
We love and seek adventure at Field Ethos. And because shit can go FUBAR at any moment in the wild, that healthy respect and fear of the unknown is a major visceral part of the experience we seek. Without it, you’re merely chum in the water.
We’re all really glad Carl survived getting smashed by a pissed off 2,000-pound animal. And yeah, to our sick, twisted minds, that footage is pretty funny, especially after we know he’s OK.
But the humor also comes from a place of understanding some have clearly lost. If you want to step into danger zones, in this case the proximity of a wild animal, you’d better have the tools and the skills to handle the situation.
Otherwise, as David Lee Roth once so elegantly screamed—you “might as well jump.”
