People are stupid. In this particular case, I do not blame the Darwin Award candidate - i.e., the child - but I lay every last ounce of blame at the feet of his incompetent, irresponsible, and generally idiotic parents. I would like to say this kind of thing is relatively unusual, but the last time I and my family were at Yellowstone, I happened to see a lady actually walk up and pat a sleeping bison. It opened one eye, looked at her, and went back to sleep, but still... how gorramed stupid can you get? Of course, at the time, I was seeing it all over my shoulder as my parents hussled me away so we would not get splattered with the highly-probable impending blood spray...

Sadly, in this day and age, this will simply cause a call to have the bison removed from Yellowstone, rather than having the moronic parents hung up by their toenails. Just goes to show how much our American culture values responsibility and accountability.