Contender For Stupidest Parent Ever
I have returned from my yearly trip to North Dakota. As typical, the main purpose of the trip was for my father and I to go backpacking in the BWCA. My father typically drags a book or two with him on these trips, and this year was no exception. In particular, he brought along Bill Bryson's chronicle of his attempt to hike the Appalachian Trail, a phrase which during our trip became a bit of a punchline due to South Carolina's governor. Even without the unexpected juxtaposition of the governor's extramarital hijinks, Bryson's tale is quite entertaining, although if you've not read him I think I would not start here; go with In a Sunburned Country or Notes From a Small Island instead.
In any event, one particular tale that Bryson relates is so mind boggling that I'm not certain whether it can be believed. Although it does have an air of the falsified cautionary myth about it, and is in no way cited or referenced, I am afraid that I cannot rule it impossible out of hand given that we live in a world where Darwin Awards came into existence. Since Bryson will be spending quite a bit of time hiking out in the wilds, he spends some time learning about bear attacks. While in the Shenandoah National Park, he reports that because the black bears have been fed human food, they no longer think twice about sauntering up to picnic tables and helping themselves. For the most part, the picnickers sensibly retreat to their cars in these cases. However, Bryson reports that with the rise of camcorders in the mid 1980s there was a rise in the number of cases where the bears attacked humans, often because the humans hang around to record the bears snacking. This culminates in the story at hand, namely that:
There was one instance where a mother smeared honey on her toddler's hand so that they could get footage of the black bear licking the child's hand. The bear, being unaware of these plans, bit the child's hand off instead.
This is paraphrased heavily (since the book is back in North Dakota and I am not) but you get the gist. A few questions leap to mind:
- If the kid survived (the story does not say) how did his family explain his presumed loss of a hand/arm to him when he got older?
- Does video footage of this incident occur? One assumes that it must have, since the whole point was to get a 'cute' video for the family archives?
- Why on earth would a parent actually admit that they had done this? Wouldn't you make up some story, any story, to explain why a black bear had bitten your child's hand rather than admit to something like this?
- And what kind of trouble, if any, did the parents get into for this? I suppose gross stupidity isn't a crime, but child endangerment of some sort seems a cinch.
On a vaguely related note, the Wikipedia article List of Unusual Deaths is very entertaining reading.
In any event, one particular tale that Bryson relates is so mind boggling that I'm not certain whether it can be believed. Although it does have an air of the falsified cautionary myth about it, and is in no way cited or referenced, I am afraid that I cannot rule it impossible out of hand given that we live in a world where Darwin Awards came into existence. Since Bryson will be spending quite a bit of time hiking out in the wilds, he spends some time learning about bear attacks. While in the Shenandoah National Park, he reports that because the black bears have been fed human food, they no longer think twice about sauntering up to picnic tables and helping themselves. For the most part, the picnickers sensibly retreat to their cars in these cases. However, Bryson reports that with the rise of camcorders in the mid 1980s there was a rise in the number of cases where the bears attacked humans, often because the humans hang around to record the bears snacking. This culminates in the story at hand, namely that:
There was one instance where a mother smeared honey on her toddler's hand so that they could get footage of the black bear licking the child's hand. The bear, being unaware of these plans, bit the child's hand off instead.
This is paraphrased heavily (since the book is back in North Dakota and I am not) but you get the gist. A few questions leap to mind:
- If the kid survived (the story does not say) how did his family explain his presumed loss of a hand/arm to him when he got older?
- Does video footage of this incident occur? One assumes that it must have, since the whole point was to get a 'cute' video for the family archives?
- Why on earth would a parent actually admit that they had done this? Wouldn't you make up some story, any story, to explain why a black bear had bitten your child's hand rather than admit to something like this?
- And what kind of trouble, if any, did the parents get into for this? I suppose gross stupidity isn't a crime, but child endangerment of some sort seems a cinch.
On a vaguely related note, the Wikipedia article List of Unusual Deaths is very entertaining reading.