34 thoughts on “I was in Banff; why didn’t I get to see this?”

  3. Reference the last spoken words in the vid…

    There’s no messing with an irritable evolutionist/atheist either

  4. I have never seen Elk in Banff, but I have seen them outside my window. Every spring, as the snow is melting, about 5 or 6 females come to my house to eat the grass that is no longer covered by snow. That grass is exclusively under the eaves of my house. Which means that the only thing separating me from the Elk is my living room window. So close, yet so far.

    I also get black bears eating clover in the same spot. A couple of years ago I had a black bear and cub out there, about 4 ft from my window. Mommy was very lazy, as she preferred to eat the clover while *sitting down*.

    Oh yeah, the Elk also cause the entire house to shake when they come around at 2am in the morning.

  5. That is not Banff – Banff is policed by Mounties – the police in this video are clearly US police – Canadian police, moreover, do not ride segways!

      1. They’ve mixed footage from different locales. I recognize Mammoth Hot Springs from Yellowstone in several scenes, but the more urban scenes are from somewhere else (maybe Banff?).

      2. I recognize Mammoth Hot Springs from Yellowstone in several scenes, but don’t recognize some of the others. Obviously they’ve mixed footage from different locales.

    2. Those look like Colorado (US) tags on the vehicles. Probably Estes Park, Colorado, which is famous for its seasonal elk invasions.

      2. Yes that’s what I was thinking too. Stories like this on local nightly news are common this time of year and summer-time, usually along the lines of:

        “Tourist in Estes Park tries and pose with Bull Elk – watch what happens at 10PM!”

        1. Ha!

          People can be rather thoughtless about that kind of thing. I recall a story in the paper many years ago involving an alligator, a small child and a mother with a camera.

          It took place in Cape Canaveral, which in addition to the space launch facilities is a large wetlands wildlife preserve. The mother thought it would be cute to get a picture with her tot mugging with an alligator. She reached over a waist high chain link fence with her tot and placed it on the back of a sunning alligator that was sprawled quite motionless next to the fence. She then stepped back to take a picture. Very luckily for the tot, there just happened to be somebody with a few brain cells to rub together standing close by. Might even have been a Federal Wildlife Officer, can’t remember clearly. This person reached over and snatched the tot back over the fence just as the mother was letting go. And, more importantly, just as the previously motionless alligator was starting to turn its head around to see what was going on. If I remember correctly the woman was charged with something for the incident.

          1. Your story made me think of Pocho the tame crocodile.
            http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pocho_%28crocodile%29

            After seeing video of the man playing with the croc, I thought “this has to be some sort of hoax.”

            However, after reading the wiki article, this explanation sounded plausible:

            Horrocks speculated in his documentary the gunshot wound to Pocho’s head might have damaged the crocodile’s brain, whereby the usual instinctive behavior of the crocodile changed as a result, allowing the crocodile to be susceptible to human emotions when it was rescued from near death

            Hmm. Maybe not human emotions, but some sort of brain damage at least?

          2. I think the problem is people are overly influenced by TV shows to understand the danger wild animals pose. Remember Australia’s Steve Irwin?

    5. Yeah I was thinking it looked American too, especially because of the segways.

  7. Elk in Banff come and go. When I moved to Calgary in 1998 a drive up to Banff guaranteed Elk sightings. I mean, they were everywhere and right in town. These days I rarely see them. I think they were ultimately relocated – i.e. too many close encounters with tourists…

    1. Interesting how the elk within the townsite – actually, within the park – are very blase about human beings, while outside of the park you can’t get near them. I worked near Canmore for years and can’t recall ever seeing elk in the vicinity behaving like they do in this video, even though it’s only a few km down the highway and the same animals could conceivably have both towns within their ranges.

    1. As the contributor I should have caught the location. Those vehicle plates are clearly not Alberta, besides Alberta does not require front licence plates. My bad – Still an interesting clip.

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