The first time we visited Yellowstone National Park, we noticed a line of vehicles parked on the shoulder of the road. That can only mean there’s an animal, or animals, in the neighborhood.
We pulled in behind a pickup truck where two baby bears were on their hind legs and being fed apple slices from a slightly lowered driver’s side window. While the driver fed the cubs, the passenger got out with his camera and came around to the left front fender and took pictures.
In a few minutes, the pickup truck pulled away and the baby bears came our way. When they stood up their noses reached the bottom of our car’s windows and when they got no satisfaction on my side, they went around to Nancy’s side. Eventually, we realized our doors were not locked and hastily locked them.
We never saw Mama Bear until she lumbered up out of the woods, and stood up and put her front feet ON THE ROOF of our car. I still have the photograph I took looking out my window at a big brown bear chest and its white stripe.
She didn’t shake the car or anything, just stood there for a little bit before going back into the woods with the kids.
We quickly observed how lucky was the clown with the camera taking pictures at the pickup truck that Mama Bear didn’t come out then. They move awfully fsst, these bears, perhaps faster than a guy who might not have sensed her rush out of the woods until the last second and couldn’t get back into that truck.
Some tourists do some incredibly dumb things in Yellowstone. More often these days we hear about some idiot who decides to pet that nice buffalo and realizes much too late that Yellowstone is many things but it’s not a petting zoo.
So it is that we wonder if Donald Trump’s demands that congressional districts can be redrawn to protect him and his disastrous reign might not be a case of feeding bears and petting a buffalo.
Redrawing the districts just might urinarily agitate not only Democrats, but also be the final straw for some of his Republicans and—most important—quiet independents, who could be the Mama Bears and the intolerant buffalo in those district elections. In this political climate, sure-things are not necessarily sure.
The polls have indicated some softening of R voters who might not vote or—for this election only—hold their noses and vote for a Democrat. Republicans, as is true with all other voting blocs, do not lack independent thought and might decide this is a time to really stop the steal.
The biggest bloc that could come into play are the outright independents who might have found Trump marginally less objectionable than Harris last year but this year might see redistricting as the straw-breaking issue for them, too.
If Donald Trump really was confident in his domestic and foreign policies, he wouldn’t be pulling this stunt. But he isn’t, so he’s unthinkingly feeding bears and trying to pet a buffalo.
The 19th century English poet William Cosgrove Monkhouse, wrote an appropriate limerick for this occasion—although it involves an animal not found in Yellowstone National Park:
There was a young lady of Niger
Who smiled as she rode on a tiger;
They returned from the ride
With the lady inside,
And the smile on the face of the tiger
Independents, disaffected Republicans, and angry motivated Democrats could combine to make a huge Tiger in 2026. Trumpists might want to consider carefully how much they want to use their twigs to poke it through the bars. Creatures such as bears, buffalo, and Tigers seem docile enough.
Until……