It is to laugh...

 

Readers may remember the idiot tourist poor lady who was tossed by a buffalo back in 2020, after getting rather too close to it for the animal's comfort.  She lost her jeans during the buffalo's charge, and it ran around for a while with them fluttering from its horn.

Now her misadventures have been commemorated in - of all things - a snow sculpture.  A tip o' the hat to Andrew in Australia for sending me the link.

Fortunately, the woman who was attacked in South Dakota recovered from her injuries – but the image of her pants hanging from the bison horn remains a recurring theme for wildlife-lovers around the country.

That includes artist Heather Friedli of St. Paul, Minnesota – who with her friends, Juliana Welter and Kelly Thune, sculpted their own rendition of the iconic image. Their work received the third place award and the “Artist’s Choice Award” at last year’s Minnesota Snow Sculpting competition.

The ladies, who call themselves “Team Kwe” (which means “Team Woman” in the Anishinaabemowin language), are a competitive all women’s snow sculpting team from Minnesota.

. . .

Friedli said the trio ‘tossed around’ other ideas before deciding to depict the Custer State Park incident at the Minnesota State competition in St. Paul last year.

“At first we were just going to do a bison with an eagle, kind of laughing and talking, and then my friend was like, ‘Wait a minute, remember when that bison got that lady that one time a couple of years ago, and it was big on Native TikTok and Twitter and all that?’” Friedli said. “‘We should totally do pants,’ and we’re like, ‘Oh my God, we should totally do the pants.’”

The sculpture received third place at the competition, and was a crowd favorite.

“People loved it,” said Friedli. “And we got Artist’s Choice, too, which is always important, to be recognized by fellow artists.”

There's more at the link, including a photograph of the sculpture.  I have no idea how they managed to keep the jeans hanging intact from the horn, dealing as they were with snow rather than something more durable, but they did.

I've never understood such daft behavior in the presence of potentially dangerous animals.  I've mentioned before the foreign kayakers who wanted to transit the Limpopo River in South Africa to the sea.  Some of us on the river bank warned them very specifically about the hippo herd visible from their landing-place, but they brushed aside our cautionary words.  I think they preferred to believe Disney's version of hippos, rather than what those of us who lived with them in real life had to say.  Sure enough, they got too close, and their leader got chomped.  His body was never found - I daresay the crocodiles took care of whatever the hippos left.  His kayak was recovered downriver, having been literally bitten in half.  Hippos don't mess around.

(The rest of the tourist group abandoned their journey, having found out the hard way that Africa wasn't all unicorn farts and rainbows.  To add insult to injury, the dead man's family wanted to sue the government because it hadn't posted uniformed wildlife rangers to warn tourists of the danger.  When it was pointed out to them that warning signs existed, and locals had provided just such a warning, they dismissed the latter on the grounds that we hadn't been in uniform, and therefore had no "official standing" to provide such a warning, and therefore they had no duty to listen to us.  Sheesh...)

Anyway, in this case it was Bison 1, Daft Tourist 0, and the jeans victory flag was raised high.  Good for the bison!

Peter