Chapter 1: The Selfie of Doom

1 THE SELFIE OF DOOM
My family was delayed on our return to the ranch because we were trying to prevent a tourist from getting mauled by an elk.

We were leaving Yellowstone National Park, having spent the day exploring, on our first vacation in two years. My parents had been working overtime at FunJungle Adventure Park, the world-famous theme park/zoo, since before it had even opened. Mom was the head primatologist and Dad was the official photographer, and their jobs kept them extremely busy.

I had always thought that FunJungle attracted an unusual number of dumb tourists. But at Yellowstone, I discovered that there were dumb tourists everywhere.

It was the week after the Fourth of July, and thus the height of tourist season; Yellowstone was flooded with visitors from all over the planet. That day we had witnessed dozens of people doing incredibly boneheaded things, often directly in front of signs warning them not to do them: attempting to pet wild animals, climbing over the safety railings at scenic viewpoints, swimming in rivers with life-threatening rapids—and positioning their young children dangerously close to bison for photographs. Two rangers had to arrest a college student who was about to use Monarch Geyser as a hot tub; apparently, he hadn’t realized that the 204-degree water would have boiled him alive.

I had also overheard tourists ask the park rangers startlingly uninformed questions, such as: “What time do you turn off the Old Faithful Geyser every night?” “Why do we have to stay on the hiking paths when the deer don’t?” And “Where can we see the presidents carved into the mountain?” (The answers were: “It’s a geological feature, not a fountain”; “The deer are wild animals”; and “You’re thinking of Mount Rushmore, which is five hundred miles away in South Dakota.”) I also heard one person angrily claim that a raccoon had stolen his bag of Cheetos and demand that the park service refund his money. Tourists did things like this so often that the park rangers had a name for them: tourons.

Despite all of that, it had been a good day. Yellowstone featured some of the most beautiful scenery I had ever encountered, and we had also been lucky enough to spot three bald eagles, a moose, and a pair of wolves. Plus, my girlfriend, Summer, was with us. Summer was fourteen, a little bit less than a year older than me. She was smart and fun and liked seeing wildlife and hiking as much as I did. Her father, J.J. McCracken, was the owner of FunJungle, and he had invited us to join him—along with a few other FunJungle employees—at his friend’s ranch in West Yellowstone for a week. While my parents were big fans of Summer and her mother, Kandace, they were a bit wary of J.J., whose actions often concealed ulterior motives. However, the offer had been too good to pass up: a free place to stay, a flight on J.J.’s private jet, and a visit to one of Dad’s favorite places on Earth. (Mom and I had never been to Yellowstone, and Dad had always wanted to take us there.) We had eagerly accepted the offer.

Our group had arrived the evening before, too late to visit Yellowstone, so my parents and I had been raring to go that morning. J.J. had some business to deal with, while Kandace hadn’t arrived yet; she was flying in from a fashion shoot in New York City that afternoon. So Summer came with my family to see the park. Sidney Krautheimer, the owner of the ranch, happily lent us a car.

We were leaving the park in the late afternoon, on the road to West Yellowstone, when we saw the biggest touron of the day.

The road was a picturesque, winding route along the bank of the Madison River. It was relatively free of traffic, which was unusual in Yellowstone, as the roads in the park were prone to traffic jams. Usually, these were due to wildlife sightings; a bear, a moose, or even a common white-tailed deer could cause backups several miles long. But there were also plenty of car wrecks, often caused by tourons who had rented massive recreational vehicles that they couldn’t control. So a wide-open road through the gorgeous landscape was a pleasant surprise.

The first thing that tipped us off that we were dealing with an unusually dumb tourist—even by Yellowstone standards—was the fact that he had abandoned his car in the middle of the road. Rather than taking a few seconds to pull over onto the shoulder, he had simply stopped, put on his hazard lights, and leaped out. He hadn’t even bothered to shut his door. We nearly plowed right into the car as we came around a bend.

For a moment, we feared we had stumbled upon an emergency situation, but then we saw what had caused the man to abandon his car in such a hurry: a small herd of elk, grazing by the river. The touron was trying to get a photograph of them.

I understood why he wanted the photo; it was a spectacular scene. There were five females, four fawns, and a large bull watching over them. The fawns were adorable, certainly only a few weeks old, while the bull had an impressive ten-point rack of antlers. And amazingly, there were no other tourists around. Still, the man was making a very big mistake—in addition to having left his car in the road.

Instead of keeping a respectful distance, he was trying to get as close as possible to the elk, tramping directly across the meadow toward them. This had put all the elk on the alert. The bull looked particularly agitated, but I knew that a mother elk who felt her young were threatened could be very dangerous as well.

Dad parked our car on the shoulder. “I’m gonna see if I can talk some sense into this guy before he gets himself killed,” he said, and hopped out.

Mom climbed out too, so Summer and I did the same. After all, it was a beautiful spot and there was no point in sitting in the car.

It was only then that we discovered the man’s family was still in his car. His wife was in the passenger seat, while his two teenage children sat in the back. All three were making it obvious that they were irritated with the father. None seemed remotely aware that their car was a serious driving hazard.

“Dad!” the daughter yelled out the window. “We’ve seen, like, ten million elk already today and you’ve taken pictures of every one of them! We don’t need any more!”

“These are better elk!” the father yelled back. “This photo’s gonna be amazing!”

“Yeah right,” the son said sarcastically. He wasn’t even looking at the scenery; instead he was riveted to his phone. “It’s just a stupid deer.”

“Morton!” the wife called. “Enough is enough! I’m hungry!”

“I’m sorry to bother you,” Mom said as pleasantly as possible, “but do you think that maybe you could move your car? It’s blocking the road.”

The woman sighed with annoyance, as though my mother had asked her to do something unreasonable. “I can’t move it. That darn fool took the keys.” She pointed toward her husband.

Her daughter noticed Summer and gaped with astonishment.

Summer was famous—although she didn’t want to be. Since her father was a famous businessman and her mother was a fashion model, she’d never had any choice in the matter. She usually did her best to keep a low profile; today she was wearing sunglasses and had her blond hair tucked up under a baseball cap. We had made it through the entire day without anyone recognizing her—until now.

So Summer resorted to her usual trick in such circumstances: She pretended to be someone else.

“You’re Summer McCracken, aren’t you?” the girl asked. She was staring at Summer in the same way that a bird watcher would have regarded a bald eagle.

“Sorry, no,” Summer said, speaking with a fake western twang. “I get that all the time, though.”

The daughter narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “Are you sure you’re not her?”

“Oh, I’m positive,” Summer said.

The daughter started to press the issue, but her brother cut her off. “It’s obviously not her. Do you really think Summer McCracken would be driving around Yellowstone in that car?” He pointed toward our run-down loaner. “Summer wouldn’t come here. She goes places like Paris. Or Dubai.”

The daughter looked from Summer to our car and back to Summer again. “I guess you’re right,” she said.

Meanwhile, their father, Morton, was now attempting to sneak up on the family of elk, even though they were all staring directly at him. He had uprooted a small shrub from the ground—killing it in the process—and was holding it front of him while he waddled across the meadow in a low crouch, apparently hoping that the elk would think he was just a walking bush.

The elk did not appear to be fooled by this at all. Instead, they were growing increasingly upset as Morton approached. Due to the bend in the river, they had water on three sides of them, and Morton was coming from the only land direction; they were boxed in.

“Hey!” Dad shouted at Morton. “You’re getting much too close to those elk! You need to come back to the road!”

“Shhhh!” Morton hissed. “You’re going to scare them away! I’m trying to sneak up on them!”

“Well, you’re not doing a very good job of it!” Summer shouted. “They’re looking right at you! And if you get much closer, they’re going to attack!”

“I saw people getting way closer than this to plenty of animals today!” Morton told her.

“That doesn’t mean it’s right!” I yelled.

Morton ignored us and continued toward the elk, which were visibly nervous now. The fawns edged closer to their mothers, while the bull moved forward and gave an angry snort.

That was certainly meant as a warning to get Morton to back off, although Morton completely failed to comprehend this. Instead, he doubled down on his idiocy. Rather than retreating to his car, he turned his back on the herd of elk—and tried to take a selfie.

“Of course,” Dad said, exasperated.

As a professional wildlife photographer, Dad was extremely annoyed by the proliferation of phone cameras. He had spent his entire life trying to take photos in ways that impacted his subjects as little as possible, like using telephoto lenses, which allowed him to work from so far away that the animals rarely even knew he was there. But even the best camera phones only worked from relatively close by, which often compelled inexperienced amateur photographers like Morton to get much too close to the animals.

However, it was the ability to take selfies that had caused the most problems. Since a selfie required photographers to turn their back on their subject, it led to even more disruptive—and often hazardous—behavior. At FunJungle, there was at least one incident each day of a tourist tumbling backward into an exhibit while attempting to take a selfie. In the national parks, there was even more potential for disaster; a ranger had told me that selfie takers at Yellowstone were regularly falling off scenic viewpoints, riverbanks, canyon edges, and cliffs. Or, like Morton, they were getting dangerously close to wild animals and then not paying attention to them.

Mom, Summer, and I all started shouting at once, trying to get Morton to listen to reason—or scare the elk off. I figured we had a much better chance of scaring the elk. Even Morton’s family now grew concerned. They started shouting at him too. They even got out of the car to do it.

Morton ignored us all. Even worse, he ignored the bull elk behind him, which was growing more and more perturbed.

Since elk look somewhat similar to deer, many people don’t realize exactly how powerful and threatening they can be. A bull elk can grow to over eight feet long and weigh 750 pounds, which is far bigger than a black bear. With their sharp hooves and multipronged antlers, they can fend off full-grown mountain lions—or do serious damage to dumb tourists.

The bull behind Morton was a large specimen. It now pawed the ground and lowered its head, pointing its rack of antlers toward Morton’s backside.

“Morton, you idiot!” his wife screamed at the top of her lungs. “Look behind you!”

“Why?” Morton asked. “Is there something better to get a photo of?” He finally turned around—just in time to see the bull charge him.

Morton yelped in fear and fled across the meadow as fast as he could—which wasn’t very fast at all. He had the build of a man who hadn’t done much exercise in the past decade, and the bull quickly closed in on him.

I almost felt bad for the guy—until, in the midst of his flight, he actually tried to take a selfie. While he should have been completely focused on his own well-being, he stiff-armed the phone in front of him and clicked away.

Meanwhile, his own children were also recording the event. Both had their phones trained on the chase and were laughing as they watched their father run for his life, as though the entire event were taking place on TV.

There was nothing my parents, Summer, or I could do to help Morton. He was too far away from us.

While Morton focused on his selfies rather than fleeing, the bull elk lowered its head—and rammed its antlers into Morton’s ample bottom. Then, with a heave of its powerful neck, it scooped him up and flung him aside. Morton tumbled across the meadow while his phone sailed through the air and plunked into a beaver pond.

I was worried that the bull might now trample Morton, but thankfully it stopped, gave one last snort, and then trotted back to join its herd.

“Morton!” his wife shrieked. She ran across the meadow toward her husband. My parents, Summer, and I joined her, although Morton’s children remained on the shoulder of the road, trying to upload their videos to YouTube.

Morton was howling, which made me fear he was badly hurt, but as we got closer, it became clear what was really upsetting him. “My phone!” he wailed. “That stupid deer made me lose my phone!”

I kept a wary eye on the bull as we approached. “Do you think he might attack again?” I asked my parents.

“No,” Dad replied confidently. “I think he knows he got his point across. Literally.” He pointed to the bull, which still had a shred of Morton’s boxer shorts impaled on the tip of its antler.

Tires screeched on the road behind us, followed by a loud crash. We turned around to see that a large recreational vehicle had plowed into the rear of Morton’s car. (As we would learn later, the driver had been so focused on watching the elk gore Morton, she had taken her eyes off the road until it was too late.) The car slid off the side of the road and smashed into a tree, while the front end of the RV crumpled. A geyser of steam erupted from its radiator, like a miniature Old Faithful.

“My car!” Morton wailed. “And my phone!” He rolled over and shook his fist at the bull elk. “You stupid deer! I’m gonna sue this park for everything they’ve got!”

The bull ignored him and resumed grazing by the river.

We finally arrived at Morton’s side. Given what I’d seen the elk do to him, the injury wasn’t nearly as bad as I’d expected. Morton had a small gouge in the right cheek of his rear end but was otherwise all right. Physically, at least. Mentally, he was enraged over the loss of his car and his phone.

“You saw what that crazy deer did to me, right?” he asked us. “It just attacked me out of nowhere!”

“No, you provoked it,” Mom told him, without an ounce of sympathy. “After we repeatedly warned you not to.”

“How was I supposed to know it was dangerous?” Morton demanded. “There’s no warning signs!”

He was completely wrong. There had been plenty of signs throughout Yellowstone warning visitors that the wildlife was dangerous.

By the roadside, the driver of the RV was now arguing with Morton’s children, most likely about who was at fault in the accident. Just as Morton’s daughter leaned in to let the driver have it, the family car burst into flames.

Morton screamed again. So did his wife. She seemed to forget that her husband was wounded and raced toward the flaming car. “Our clothes!” she shouted to her children. “Get our clothes!”

Mom sighed heavily. “I think we’re going to have to take this guy to the hospital.”

I wasn’t happy about that. And I could see that Dad and Summer were disappointed too. But we couldn’t leave Morton wounded in the middle of the wilderness.

“Darn right I need to go to the hospital,” Morton said. “Lousy, no-good deer! This is the last time I ever go on vacation in a national park!”

“I’m sure the park service will be happy to hear that,” Summer informed him.

Morton ignored her and kept on ranting. “We should have gone on a cruise. They don’t have any homicidal deer on cruise ships.”

Dad looked to me and rolled his eyes. “Welcome to Yellowstone,” he said.

I laughed, figuring this was the strangest thing that would happen to me that day.

It wasn’t even close.