National and State parks are supposed to knock your socks off, in the figurative sense of course.
When an actual article of clothing is being knocked off your body while visiting an outdoors area, that can easily be summed up as “not good.” Especially when your pants go from being on your legs to hanging around the horn of a bison like some twisted trophy.
As outlandish as that sounds, that exact event actually played out back in 2020 at Custer State Park in South Dakota. While the rest of us were mainly concerned about…you know, this woman’s only worry was trying to make it out of this bison encounter alive.
National Park Service guidelines suggest that tourists should stay (at the very least) 25 yards away from wild animals, with a 100 yard buffer zone for more carnivorous and potentially dangerous creatures (like bears). However, I’m starting to think that the parks should just change the guidance to “if you see a wild animal, get in your car and leave.”
I know that’s a little bit extreme, but what else are they supposed to say? Clearly the “25 yard” suggestion isn’t landing, considering we see people and animals get flipped up into the air by bison like rag dolls on a scarily consistent basis.
This woman, being a “touron,” wanted to snap a picture with one of the bison in Custer State Park, and that ended up being quite possibly the worst decision of her life. In fact, the stunt almost cost the tourist her life, though she luckily and miraculously survived.
In the clip, which might be hard to watch for some viewers, the woman gets her pants horned by a bison, which then allowed for the massive 2,000 pound beast to swing her around like a redneck merry-go-round. Though it was embarrassing, the fact that her pants finally gave away probably saved her life, though it did leave her pant-less.
The video of the attack on YouTube was “too graphic to be included” via a link, but thanks to social media, we were able to track it down somewhere else. In the description, the horrific scene was described as:
“A woman who attempted to approach a bison for a photo opportunity in South Dakota’s Custer State Park is lucky to be alive after the animal viciously attacked her, removing her pants in the process.
As the unidentified woman inched closer to the bison, she seemed fearless if not foolhardy. Then, it all went horribly wrong.
The woman was picked up and tossed around by one of the bison for several seconds. Some rushed to help her, as bystanders realized the woman’s pants were left on the horns.”
Holy smokes…
There’s plenty of commentary provided in the video, but the best line that comes out the footage is at the very end when the woman recording says this as she pans out to show the bison with jeans hanging from its horn like an ear ring:
“There’s a buffalo out there with that woman’s jeans hanging from its antler.”
One could say she swung and missed twice there in that observation. For one, it’s a bison, not a buffalo, and two, it’s a horn, not an antler. I guess when you are getting thrown around by your pants though, it doesn’t matter what the specific genealogy is…
