Toddlers are always up to no good… even in the Animal Kingdom.
The National Park Service says that Yellowstone National Park is home to the largest concentration of mammals in the lower 48 states. Most notably, there’s a whole lot of prey (bison, elk, moose, mule deer, etc.), and a healthy amount of predators (black bears, lynx, mountain lions, wolves, etc.).
In other words, there’s always going to be a good chance of animals crossing paths, or at the very least, affecting one another’s lives.
And because Yellowstone is home to so many different animals, those that visit the park at the right time of the year get to see the circle of life in many forms and fashions. This story just so happens to include both – an old carcass, and a young wolf pup. Nature can be a brutal place, but it can also be rather entertaining.
For example, a couple of days ago, the Yellowstone Bear Management team worked quickly to put up signs warning visitors to stay away from an area. Why? Well, a bear had been spotted feeding on a carcass, and one of the many things that bears can get territorial over is their food. You are always supposed to give bears a 100-yard buffer zone, but if they are chowing down, safe to go ahead and double that.
As long as visitors see the signage, they should be okay.
However, what if a young wolf along and snatches the sign? That could cause some problems, right? Taylor Rabe, a wolf technician at Yellowstone National Park, recently caught a wolf pup being rather mischievous. It had been separated from older members of its pack, along with some other near yearlings (a wolf between one and two years old), and got into some trouble.
Did it get too close to the aforementioned bear that was feeding on a carcass within the park? Well, it might have, but we don’t know for sure. What we do know is that the little rascal stole the sign that the Yellowstone Bear Management team had put up, and ran off with it. Rabe caught the young Yellowstone wolf on camera crossing the road with the post, and then dropping it in some native landscape.
The wolf technician was thrilled that they captured this on camera, and shared the video to Instagram with this caption:
“When the pups (almost yearlings!) are away from their elders, this is when we see them being extra mischievous. This young male from the Junction Butte pack successfully crossed the road in hopes of reuniting with the remainder of his pack, BUT found this really fun, and interesting toy as he made his way through the valley.
This is a closure sign from Yellowstone’s Bear Management team that was set up to warn visitors to stay out of an area due to an active carcass with grizzly bears on it… clearly this pup had better things to do with it.”
Yikes… hopefully Yellowstone National Park and its bear management squad had some back-up signs ready to go.
