Saving Idiots From Themselves

In Western, liberal and liberalized societies, more or less on the extremely socialized end of the scale, such as those which exist in North America, where manufacturers stuff cautionary notes in with their products attempting to forestall potential lawsuits when consumers misuse products in ways they were never meant to be used, we're being saved from our own stupidity.

It is, however, rather insulting to the intelligence to read these cautionary notes; why on Earth are they even necessary? Or considered to be necessary? Are we really, the great unwashed public, that bereft of common sense? Guess so.

Why else have laws against driving while drunk. Any idiot knows they're impaired when they've been drinking; impaired physically and mentally, responses being inextricably tied to ability to discern danger, that kind of thing. Laws against jay-walking, against not wearing a seat belt in a moving vehicle, against selling tobacco and liquor to minors.

That kind of stuff. We are, sadly, collectively lacking in smarts. Inadequately socialized, in fact. Some contradiction, that.

Some fellow at the San Francisco Zoo decides to get up close and personal with a grizzly-bear penned at the zoo, with the very particular purpose of separating the witless from the frenzied umbrage of an animal protecting its (however limited) territory. Good thing for him he was spotted in time and saved from his own lunacy.

Sad for the bear; would have been the first time in ages he'd have been able to enjoy fresh meat he could himself butcher.

Grizzlies are dangerous animals. They're huge, and cantankerous when someone invades their territory whether it be in the wild or in a cage. They're predators, they search out their prey and dispatch them, dispassionately but savagely, to assuage their natural instinct to refresh their larders from time to time.

Siberian Tigers are ferocious animals in the wild, too. No less so in captivity, and at that same zoo two years earlier, another soul wafted down to Hades when the tiger there dispatched him. His two companions, merely severely injured, have had the kind of experience that would illuminate the rest of their days.

The Calgary Zoo had a bit of excitement a few days ago when two 27-year-olds suffering from arrested mental development - most surely lacking survival instincts - went to great lengths to do the heroic. What fun it was, leaping the two-and-a-half-metre perimeter fence.

Can't keep them out; corrals are for the weak of heart, the unadventurous, the lovers of life beyond three score years. In the wee - really wee - hours of the morning another one-metre-high outer perimeter was scaled. Woo-hoo! Look at us! Except there was no one to look at them, there in the dark, at 1:00 a.m. Make a good story at the local tavern later, though.

"I honestly don't know what would possess someone to put themselves in harm's way like that. It's not something I would want to attempt", said a truly mystified zoo spokesperson.

See, even if they got within a nose-hair's-width of the final fence enclosing the Siberian Tigers, they would be safe from harm, just up close and dangerously tempting. The tigers could never get their snaggle-toothed jaws nor their broad hairy pawed-claws through the links of the fence enclosing them.

But if the hapless men of courage shoved their arms through those handy little slots, then the tigers most certainly could, would and did indeed snag them. And then all hell could break loose. Which it most certainly did, with one retarded adult-in-waiting finding himself up against a physical power he might never have envisaged in his most haunting nightmare, and the other, relatively less injured, frantically dialling 911.

In the dark, dread, dead of the night. Two witless fools and Vitali, the Siberian Tiger reacting to an intrusion into his inner sanctum. Another swishing, switching, animal tale.