Coyote Yellowstone River

Television has always had a larger than life effect on the animals in Yellowstone. KYEL, Yellowstone’s own closed circuit TV station has been available to the parks residents for many years now. Most animals had cable until satellite came in and now that seems to be the system of choice due to the park’s restrictions on running overhead wires.

The effects on the young animals of the park has been pronounced over the years. Many young Sandhill cranes learned to dance watching American Bandstand and young antelopes waited breathlessly for the Olympic track and field events, especially those featuring the sprinters. Sea Hunt with Lloyd Bridges was a favorite of all the young otters and of course all the young spike bulls never missed Mickey Mouse Club when Annette was on.

But TV had its dark side too. Things that were meant to be humorous were changed by certain individuals to fit their own purposes. We’re not mentioning any names here but they looked a lot like coyotes. Coyotes were drawn to the edgier, hipper, more intellectual type of humor like Saturday Night Live or SNL as we know it now. One of the skits that they particularly enjoyed was called ‘Land Shark” and featured a giant shark that used lots of different ploys to get young women to open their doors so he could eat them. While most viewers laughed at the absurdities of the situation the coyotes watched closely. They saw how they might turn this approach into a technique that would allow them to approach their intended meals in a way that would cut down on all that chasing and running and leaping to get fed. Using the right choice of words would have those ground squirrels walking right into their open jaws.

Here we see a coyote at the front door of a young well-fed ground squirrel calling “Candy-Gram” down her hallway, a favorite ploy of the Land Shark to get you to open your door. You and I laugh at the idea of this actually working but then we don’t take into account the natural dim-ness of a young well-fed ground squirrel. Sitting there on the couch, bloated and on a sugar high from eating all that grass, they are easily fooled and in this case the thought of someone actually sending her a candy-gram overcame her normal sense of caution. Too bad for her.

TV is a force for both good and evil. In this case it was, unfortunately, not used for good. The moral of this story then is, if you’re a young well fed ground squirrel and someone knocks on your door saying “Candy-Gram”, Don’t open the door. Nobody sends ground squirrels candy-grams. If you had watched SNL instead of 100 uses for fresh green grass shoots on Cooking For Rodents, you’d be safe and snug in your burrow right now.