I have long contended that Disney’s portrayals of animals with human emotions and the stupid gene have caused untold deaths from wild animals of said stupid people and of the wild animals after they behave perfectly normal and have to be put down.
I had a friend in the late 1980’s early 1990’s time frame, Lord he’s probably dead now who was driving through Smokey Mountains early to work one morning and ran upon a couple with their two kids were parked in the middle of the road, clearly tourists and they were down on their knees trying to touch a pretty snake as they told him. The were trying to pet a four foot eastern Diamond back rattlesnake.
My friend gets out see’s what they are doing and yells get back slowly and leave that snake alone it’s deadly poisonous! They ignored him so he said it’s your funeral dumb asses and got back in his truck to drive off and the snake started crawling slowly across the road and they started to follow it. Said friend opps, ran over the snakes head and killed it as he drove off, they were furiously cursing him and giving him the finger. He said I hated to kill the snake but these people were dead if they had gotten bit where we were in the park they wouldn’t have made it to a hospital.