It’s time to watch your step in Yellowstone National
Park. Aggressive herds of rutting elk have taken over park
headquarters at Mammoth Hot Springs, as they do every year at this
time, and two women tourists narrowly escaped injury at the hands –
make that horns – of sexually aroused bulls.
The
first incident occurred Sept. 18, when a German woman stopped her
car within a few feet of a bull and got out. The animal then turned
on her and attacked with his antlers, pinning her against the car
with one antler on either side of her, park spokeswoman Marsha
Karle said. The woman suffered only a slight bruise to one wrist,
said ranger Mona Divine.
The second incident
occurred Sept. 29, when a California woman went for an after-dinner
stroll. In the dark she accidentally came between a bull and his
harem of cows. The bull charged, the woman climbed a wooden fence
and found even more trouble: On the other side of the fence was a
sinkhole created by a collapsed hot pool. The woman fell in the
hole and had to be rescued by rangers using a winch. An ambulance
took her to a hospital in Livingston, Mont., where she was treated
and released.
The Park Service is asking people
to give elk an especially wide berth. “It’s that time of year,”
Karle said. “Here we go again.”
* Scott
McMillion
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Elk target tourists.
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